Irish authorities have unlocked a seized Bitcoin (BTC) wallet linked to a large-scale drug case. The wallet, containing 500 BTC, had been inaccessible for seven years due to missing private keys, and opens the door to recovering a massive BTC stash from other seized wallets.
Irish Police Unlocks Seized Bitcoin Wallet
On Tuesday, Ireland’s National Police and Security Services announced that they had gained access to a seized crypto wallet containing 500 BTC, which were the proceeds of crime.
In a statement, the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), in collaboration with Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, confirmed the seizure of approximately €30 million in crypto, worth around $35.4 million at current prices.
“Europol hosted operational meetings at its headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands and provided critical support to Bureau investigators and analysts with the provision of highly complex technical expertise and decryption resources vital to the success of the operation,” authorities explained.
According to local reports, the wallet was seemingly part of a larger Bitcoin stash linked to a drug case. The wallet was seized, along with 11 other wallets, in 2019 and had been inaccessible to authorities over the past seven years due to the missing private keys.
The seizure marks a major development, as it is the first time the CAB has been able to access any of the wallets, which contained a total of 6,000 Bitcoin. Irish authorities did not confirm whether the recently seized assets were part of the case. However, data from the blockchain intelligence platform Arkham Intelligence suggests that the wallet is part of the assets stuck in limbo.
Arkham shows that a wallet associated with the case transferred 500 Bitcoin to an unknown address that subsequently moved the assets to Coinbase Prime on March 24. The wallet, labeled “Clifton Collins: Lost Keys,” had been inactive since January 2016.
The platform also links 13 other addresses to Collins, with total holdings of roughly 5,500 Bitcoin, worth $392.3 million at the time of writing.
Missing Keys Lock 5,500 BTC Away
The Bitcoin was originally confiscated from a 53-year-old former beekeeper from Dublin, Clifton Collins, who was involved in a “large-scale” cannabis operation nine years ago. Collins began cultivating cannabis full-time around 2005, renting properties around Ireland to grow crops and sell them in Dublin.
As reported by Bitcoinist, he managed to evade law enforcement until the police discovered €2,000 worth of cannabis in Collins’ vehicle in 2017, leading to his arrest and a wider investigation that uncovered his drug-growing operations.
During Bitcoin’s early years, Collins invested in BTC around 2011 and 2022, when it was worth only a fraction of its current value. As the flagship cryptocurrency surged in popularity and price, he decided to disperse his growing wealth across multiple virtual wallets, creating 12 wallets that were later seized by the police.
He told police that he had “meticulously” documented the keys to access these wallets on a sheet of paper hidden inside the aluminum cap of a fishing rod case kept at one of his rental properties in Galway.
Nonetheless, Collins claimed that the paper went missing after a break-in at his home. Reports argued that the fishing rod case could also have been likely incinerated after his landlord cleared the property and sent his belongings to a landfill following the arrest.
In any case, the loss of the sole copy of the private keys left the CAB with a digital fortune that remained inaccessible until now. The breakthrough could signal that a recovery of the 5,500 Bitcoin sitting in the other wallets is possible.
It’s worth noting that authorities had already forfeited assets worth $1.39 million, including $1.15 million in Bitcoin, to which Collins still had access codes.
