A former cop in the United Kingdom was sentenced to five and a half years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to covering up his theft of 50 bitcoins seized during an investigation into the now-defunct illicit dark web marketplace Silk Road.
In 2014, the former UK National Crime Agency (NCA) officer, Paul Chowles, assisted in the arrest of Thomas White, a man “who had launched Silk Road 2.0 less than a month after the FBI had shut down the original site in 2013,” the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a press release.
Chowles was tapped to analyze and extract “relevant data and cryptocurrency” from White’s seized devices, specifically due to Chowles’ reputation for being “technically minded and very aware of the dark web and cryptocurrencies,” CPS said.
Like US cops busted for stealing bitcoins from Silk Road seizures, Chowles’ theft was brazen. In 2017, he transferred 50 of 97 seized bitcoins from one of White’s wallets to a public address, then used a cryptocurrency mixer called Bitcoin Fog to break up the bitcoins into smaller amounts “in an attempt to hide the trail of the money,” CPS said.
At the time, the bitcoins were worth about $80,000, but today, they’re valued at nearly $6 million.
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