National Crime Agency officer jailed for stealing £4.4m worth of seized bitcoin

Paul Chowles had been an investigator on the case of Thomas White from Liverpool, who alerted the police to the theft. Photograph: CPS

A National Crime Agency (NCA) officer has been jailed for stealing £4.4m worth of bitcoin seized during a joint operation with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), after the criminal he was investigating told the police it was missing.

Paul Chowles thought he had got away with the crime for five years, prosecutors said, after laundering the money on the dark web and spending £613,000, mostly on day-to-day expenses.