Paul Chowles, a former officer from the UK’s National Crime Agency, has been sent to prison for stealing 50 BTC
Chowles, who worked on the case as a technical specialist, was sentenced to five and a half years after admitting to theft, transferring criminal property, and concealing stolen funds.
Silk Road 2.0 was an online black market created shortly after the FBI closed the original Silk Road in 2013. It ran for a year before being shut down by authorities.
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When the National Crime Agency arrested co‑founder Thomas White in 2014, they seized 97 BTC from him. In 2017, investigators noticed that 50 BTC from the seized wallet had been moved to another address without explanation.
The investigation assumed White had somehow regained access to his wallet. However, he said only someone inside the agency could have done it.
They discovered that the missing Bitcoin had been sent through a service called Bitcoin Fog. From there, the funds were moved to exchanges and loaded onto crypto debit cards.
Records showed that the cards were used to spend more than £109,000, while the total benefit to Chowles was estimated to be over £613,000.
Chowles’ role had given him direct access to White’s seized devices and accounts. During a follow‑up investigation, police found a phone linking him to the transfers and notebooks in his office containing login details and other information about White’s crypto accounts.
On July 11, Nicholas Truglia was sentenced to a 12-year prison term after failing to repay Michael Terpin, CEO of Transform Group. How did the case unfold? Read the full story.
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