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

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

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

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

The Quiet Wallet Comes Back to Life

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

With questions raised about who had access to Collins’ Bitcoin, a local newspaper reported that it was Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) that opened the bag with technical assistance from Europol’s Cybercrime Center. However, there are still 11 more bags left, with untapped assets of about $390 million at the current BTC price near $71,000.

Collins’ story makes interesting reading. He once managed a large cannabis grow house in the Dublin area and used his drug profits to buy around 6,000 BTC between 2011 and 2012, when they were buying for 4 to 6 dollars. As a basic theft deterrent, he divided his stash evenly into 12 wallets, each holding 500 BTC. He then printed their private keys on paper and hid them inside the aluminum cap of a fishing rod case in a rental.

Years later, in 2017, Irish police stopped Collins in County Galway for a traffic stop, where they found a large amount of marijuana in his car, which led to his arrest and sparked a wide-ranging investigation. He ended up being sentenced to 5 years in prison, the judge ruled that his BTC was proceeds of crime and ordered him to forfeit it.

However, when he was facing the law, the owner of the drug store removed the place where he had hidden the documents with his private keys, and destroyed Collins’ belongings, including fishing gear that was said to have been sent abroad.

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The original BTC investor told authorities that the codes are gone forever, leaving all parties locked out, and the court’s decision was unenforceable until this development.

The Luck That Grew Up Remains Untouched

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

If Collins still had Bitcoin, he would have made a huge profit. At the time of the 2019 court order, his holdings were valued at approximately $61 million, with BTC exchanging hands at approximately $10,150. But that’s a lot higher, and the actual total would be worth about $426 million, based on current pricing. The recovered fund alone represents a return of nearly 18,000 times what a 55-year-old would have spent to buy another BTC.