Irish Police Recover $35M Bitcoin From Drug Dealer’s Lost Wallet

Collins printed his private keys on paper and hid them inside the aluminum cap of a fishing rod case that was later disposed by his landlord.

Irish authorities have reportedly accessed one of 12 long-dormant Bitcoin wallets belonging to convicted drug dealer Clifton Collins.

On March 24, they transferred 500 BTC worth around $35 million to Coinbase in a single on-chain transaction, a move that was flagged by blockchain intelligence firm Arkham as the first confirmed recovery in a case that has frustrated investigators since 2017.

Dormant Wallet Springs Back to Life

On-chain data shared by Arkham shows 500 BTC left a wallet labeled “Clifton Collins: Lost Keys” at 12:51 on March 24 and was transferred to Coinbase Prime.

With questions raised over who had managed to access Collins’s Bitcoin, a local news outlet reported that it was Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) that had opened the wallet with technical support from Europol’s Cybercrime Center. However, there are still 11 other wallets remaining, with the untouched holdings amounting to roughly $390 million at BTC’s current price near $71,000.

Collins’s story makes for interesting reading. He once ran large-scale cannabis grow houses in the Dublin area and used his drug profits to buy around 6,000 BTC between 2011 and 2012, when they went for $4 to $6. As a basic precaution against theft, he split his stash equally across 12 wallets, with each holding 500 BTC. He then printed their private keys on paper and hid them inside the aluminum cap of a fishing rod case at a rented property.

Years later, in 2017, Irish police stopped Collins in County Galway for a routine traffic check, upon which they found large amounts of cannabis in his vehicle, leading to his arrest and sparking a wider investigation. He ended up being sentenced to 5 years in prison, with a judge ruling that his BTC holdings were the proceeds of crime and ordering him to forfeit them.

However, during his ordeal with the law, the drug dealer’s landlord apparently cleared the property where he had hidden the papers with his private keys, discarding Collins’s belongings, including the fishing gear, which was reportedly sent abroad and destroyed.

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The early BTC investor told authorities the codes were gone for good, leaving all parties locked out, and the court’s ruling was effectively unenforceable until this development.

A Fortune That Grew While It Sat Untouched

Bitcoin has had a rough few weeks, falling below $68,000 after being turned down at $76,000 last week following rising tensions in the Middle East. However, it later rose back to around $71,000, and according to CoinGecko, its price at the time of writing was down more than 3% in the last week but up almost 9% in the last month.

If Collins had still been in possession of the Bitcoin, he would have made a significant profit. At the time of the 2019 court order, his holding was valued at nearly $61 million, with BTC exchanging hands for around $10,150. But that has risen dramatically, and the full original stash would be worth around $426 million, going by the current price. The recovered wallet alone represents a return that’s nearly 18,000 times what the 55-year-old spent to buy some of the BTC.