Former National Crime Agency officer stole bitcoin from dark web drug dealer
The NCA was investigating the Silk Road 2.0 site – which allowed users to buy drugs and other illicit goods after the original Silk Road was shut down by the FBI in 2013 – and arrested Liverpool-based Thomas White in 2014.
Intelligence officer Paul Chowles took the details of White's "retirement wallet" and stole 50 Bitcoin before sending it to a cryptocurrency"mixing" service called Bitcoin Fog to obscure the source, prosecutors said.
Chowles, 42, appeared in Liverpool Crown Court having pleaded guilty to one count of theft, one count of transferring criminal property, and one count of concealing criminal property.
Prosecutor Craig Hassall said the Bitcoin Chowles stole was worth just under £60,000 (around US$80,000) at the time of the theft in May 2017 and is now worth over £4 million, though Chowles had realised nearly £145,000.
Chowles was dismissed by the NCA this month for gross misconduct after his guilty pleas, having been arrested in 2022.
The NCA initially thought White, who was jailed in 2019 for over five years, had managed to access his Bitcoin wallet and remove the 50 missing Bitcoin, Hassall said.
The remaining 47 Bitcoin in White's wallet were sold by the NCA for roughly £500,000, and the funds paid towards a 1.5 million-pound confiscation order made against White.
But police and the NCA began to investigate after White said he was not responsible for moving the 50 Bitcoin, and usernames and passwords linked to White's cryptocurrency accounts were found in Chowles' notebooks when he was arrested.
Judge David Aubrey said Bitcoin worth nearly £470,000 was seized from Chowles, telling him: "Had you not been arrested, you would have continued to reap the rewards of your wrongdoing."
Detective Chief Inspector John Black, from Merseyside Police 's Force Intelligence Bureau, said: "We know criminals have sought to use cryptocurrency as a way to launder money from illegal activities including drug dealing and fraud.
"It will be extremely disappointing to everyone that someone involved in law enforcement could involve themselves in the very criminality they are tasked with investigating and preventing.
"This case should illustrate in the starkest terms that nobody is above the law. When it became clear that one of the NCA's own officers had stolen Bitcoin, our officers conducted extensive enquiries to unearth a trail of evidence that Chowles had attempted to hide. This was supported fully by the NCA.
"He took advantage of his position on this investigation to line his own pockets while devising a plan that he believed would cover his tracks. He was wrong.
"I want to reassure the public that Merseyside Police have specialist officers with the experience and expertise to track the movement of funds designed to avoid detection.
"Above all, our officers have the determination to make sure criminals do not profit in any way from breaking the law while other honest and hard-working members of the public work to provide for their families."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
.jpg%3Ftrim%3D0%2C0%2C0%2C0%26width%3D1200%26height%3D800%26crop%3D1200%3A800&w=3840&q=100)
The Independent
9 minutes ago
- The Independent
Father of 17-year-old girl arrested after her newborn is found dead inside Walmart trash can
The father of a 17-year-old girl was arrested Monday after an infant was found in a restroom trash can at a Walmart. Jerry Lee Martinez, 45, was arrested and charged with abandoning/endangering a child with criminal negligence after his daughter allegedly left a newborn in the restroom at the Walmart in in Kingsville, Texas, shortly before 10:30 p.m. Employees found the newborn girl and called 911. They tried to give her CPR before emergency crews arrived, but the infant was pronounced dead at Christus Spohn Hospital–Kleberg. Surveillance footage, reviewed by police, showed the teenager entering the store and staying in the restroom for about 40 minutes. The baby was found 30 minutes after she left. A Kleberg County Sheriff's Deputy found the teen in her car in the store's parking lot later that night, and she was taken to hospital for medical treatment. Martinez was arrested at the scene and is being held at the Kleberg County Jail. The teenager remained hospitalized Tuesday, KRIS 6 News reported. Police plan to interview her upon her release.
The Sun
10 minutes ago
- The Sun
Labour giving under-18s right to vote is profoundly wrong and the reason is really simple
WHEN polling day dawns at the next general election, some 1.6million new voters will have been added to the electoral rolls. Hundreds of thousands of bright-eyed 16 and 17-year-olds will be entitled to cast a vote for their local MP for the very first time, thanks to Labour plans announced yesterday. 3 3 Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner says it will finally 'give the young a stake in our country's future'. While she's right to say those teenagers will have a say in our democracy, she is absolutely, profoundly and maddeningly wrong to think that they should. Why? Because voting is something that adults get to do, and 16 and 17-year-olds are not adults, they're children. It's really that simple. The Deputy PM claimed in a newspaper article that 16-year-olds should be allowed to vote because they can serve in the Armed Forces. This is not actually true. Under-18s may join the military, but they can't actually serve while under-age. Indeed, we don't trust 16 and 17-year-olds to do very much at all. They can't legally buy alcohol, or a packet of cigarettes or even a vape. If we can't trust them with a pint of lager, why on Earth would we trust them with a pencil in a polling booth? We don't trust under-18s to be able to watch violent movies at the cinema or pornography on their laptops. The Online Safety Act bans under-18s from being able to look at explicit material on porn sites, while 16 and 17-year-olds can't even be held fully accountable for any criminal offences they commit, no matter how serious. Reform would sweep through Labour's Red Wall at election, shock poll reveals as 68% think Britain is broken Yes, a 17-year-old can legally drive a car but, judging by the accident statistics, they're far more likely to kill themselves and others than any other drivers on the road. And allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote would be an even bigger car crash. Angela Rayner claims that many 16-year-olds are responsible beyond their years, working hard and paying tax, just as she was as a young mum at that age. Apart from the 16 and 17-year-olds, of course, who are allowed to leave school at 16 but are still required by law to be in education or training until the age of 18. Ruthless and cynical Ah, but what about all the young people who work and pay tax before the age of 18? Shouldn't they be allowed to vote? Well, that's pretty much every child who has ever saved up their pocket money to buy a new toy, because they pay 20 per cent VAT just like their parents. Are we seriously saying seven-year-olds buying Barbie dolls or Lego should also get the vote? Of course not! Let's be honest, Labour's bid to lower the voting age has nothing to do with a starry-eyed faith in the wisdom of youth or an ardent desire to broaden our democratic processes. It's all about a ruthless and cynical bid to stay in power. After winning his loveless landslide last year, with less than 34 per cent of the vote, and his government plummeting in the polls, Sir Keir Starmer has given up all hope of winning the support of British adults. Now he's having to resort to winning over their kids with some blatant election gerrymandering. When cynical politicians say they want 16 and 17-year-olds to vote, what they really mean is that they want 16 and 17-year-olds to vote for them. The PM knows that younger voters are more likely to support left-wing parties, so why not lower the voting age to benefit the Labour party? After all, why wouldn't children want to vote Labour after years of being indoctrinated by their teachers into green propaganda, trans ideology, welfare dependency and victimhood, pro-immigration and anti-Trump views, and a hard-left take on Britain's history as a white supremacist colonial power responsible for every wrong in the world? But Sir Keir Starmer may find that extending votes to young teens could come back to bite him in the backside, as many younger voters choose instead to turn to the more radical Greens or even Jeremy Corbyn's new hard-left party instead of backing the Labour government. They are just as likely to prefer Reform UK as the anti-Establishment party, following many young voters who are flocking to right-wing parties across Europe. Labour may end up ruing the day they lowered the voting age to 16, but we will all have to live with the consequences of this cynical political tactic. Giving children the vote proves beyond all doubt that, when it comes to British politics, the grown-ups are no longer in charge. ED MILIBAND, Secretary of State for Climate Hysteria, took a break from proclaiming 'The End Of The World is Nigh' to make the case for Net Zero this week. After delivering an address to the Commons on climate change, he said 'our British way of life is under threat' from it – and told Tory and Reform MPs they were 'unpatriotic' for wanting to abandon Net Zero targets. That's quite a claim. But maybe not as extreme as that of Dale Vince, Labour donor and green energy millionaire, who wants 'climate denial' to be a crime. I'd have thought the REAL threat to the 'British way of life' would be jailing those who wisely object to spending £1trillion of taxpayers' money on targets that will make our country poorer and energy more expensive, while importing Chinese-made solar panels and turbines. I guess the climate zealots prefer heatwave hysteria to cold hard facts. WE'LL PAY FOR DATA SCANDAL THE Afghan data leak and the Tory Government's cover-up using a court super-injunction is a scandal from start to finish. It could cost us dearly, paying for the fallout from the accidental email leaking a database of almost 19,000 Afghans and their families claiming to be at risk from the Taliban after British forces left. An accidental email which we were not told about for two years. Yet it seems that everyone else – including the Taliban – DID know! Meanwhile, ambulance-chasing lawyers have already lined up a thousand Afghans to sue the Government for putting their lives at risk. You'd think that those Afghans might be a tad grateful to have been brought to safety in the UK in clandestine flights rather than left to rot under the Taliban, but apparently not. Instead, they will be bringing a class action suit that could cost up to £1billion in compensation. MPs are launching their own investigations, while newspapers are now finally free to hold ministers to account. But whenever the Government makes a mistake, it is always the long-suffering taxpayer who has to pick up the bill.
Daily Mail
10 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Spared jail, shamed teacher who made sexual remarks to girls and groomed pupil
A shamed English teacher who groomed a pupil and was sexually inappropriate to two other girls in his class has avoided jail. David Davidson, 49, preyed on his victims at a school in the north of Glasgow between August 2008 and April 2023. A teenage girl told a court she skipped lessons to be alone with Davidson in his classroom. She said she fell in love with the teacher and that he had told her that he loved her back. Davidson told her he would take her to his house and out for dinner once she was old enough to leave school. He went on to stroke the girl on the face and called her 'pretty'. The father-of-three made further comments in front of pupils such as boasting about the size of his manhood. Davidson, of Milngavie, Dunbartonshire, was found guilty of two charges of engaging in sexual activity with a pupil. He was also convicted a Glasgow Sheriff Court of two further charges of conducting himself in a disorderly manner. Sheriff Michael Hanlon ordered Davidson to do 200 hours of unpaid work and put him under supervision for two years. Davidson was also put on the sex offenders' register for two years. The court heard from a now 19-year-old childcare student who recalled having Davidson as her English teacher at age 14. She stated that would skip lessons to see Davidson in his classroom. The girl said: 'He would say that I was not supposed to be here but he was not going to kick me out.' She claimed they spoke about a variety of things including sexual matters and that Davidson made 'jokes' with 'underlying remarks'. The girl told the prosecutor: 'I really liked him and thought he liked me back. 'I told him that I loved him and he said that he loved me back.' The teenager stated that she texted him that she loved him but Davidson responded in person. She further recalled being asked out to dinner by him. The girl added: 'He would tell me about his bedroom and that after I left school I would go to his house. 'He said his bedroom had mirrors.' The girl stated at one time they spoke about his aftershave. She said: 'He put his arm around me and said 'smell' then touched my face.' Davidson also called her 'pretty' on another occasion and remarked that he liked the girl with her legs crossed. The girl claimed she did not report Davidson as she did not want him to get 'in trouble'. She added: 'I thought after I left, there would be a chance to be with him.' A 31-year-old woman - who is now a primary school teacher - told the court that she was taught by Davidson in fourth year. She described Davidson's classes as 'uncomfortable' and 'informal'. The woman stated that Davidson would walk in front of her at 'waist height' while facing her. She added: 'He would lean himself on the table so his groin was on the table. 'He would wear particularly tight trousers.' The woman stated that Davidson's manhood would be 'very apparent'. She said: 'As a 15-year-old or as an adult, I would find that uncomfortable.' The woman recalled an incident in class where Davidson was said to have told her off for wagging her pinkie at him. She said: 'He said it was done to describe his penis. 'He said some people are growers and not showers and at 15 I did not know what that meant. 'I told him to 'f*** off' - I was embarrassed and upset. 'I walked out of the class and then I told the depute head of the department because I shouted and swore at him.' The woman stated that 'nothing came' from the report. She also said that Davidson would lick his lips and raise his eyebrows. A 24-year-old former student earlier told jurors that Davidson would 'stand close' to her in class. She said: 'It wasn't just me, there were other students, we were eye level with his crotch.' The now bar tender claimed that 'creepy' Davidson made her feel 'uncomfortable'. The woman further claimed Davidson complimented her on her body and told her that she had a 'womanly figure'. She added that Davidson also made a comment about women in bikinis while on a school trip to a water park while in her presence.
