Irish and EU law enforcement have managed to access one of the long‑inaccessible Bitcoin wallets linked to convicted Irish cannabis grower and dealer Clifton Collins, seizing 500 BTC that authorities had previously believed were permanently lost. Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), supported by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, used advanced technical and decryption capabilities to unlock the wallet, with the recovered coins valued at roughly €30 million–$35 million at the time of seizure. The seizure is the latest development in a case that dates back to Collins’ arrest in 2017 and a 2020 confiscation order covering approximately 6,000 BTC spread across 12 wallets, bought with cannabis proceeds in 2011–2012 when Bitcoin traded for only a few dollars. Collins reportedly stored all the private keys on a single sheet of paper hidden in a fishing rod case at a rented property; the paper went missing after his arrest, leading Irish authorities to treat most of the stash as effectively unreachable. For years, CAB held the wallets under court order while waiting for potential technological advances that might allow access. Blockchain data and law‑enforcement statements indicate that once CAB and Europol gained access, the 500 BTC were moved from the dormant address to an institutional platform, including Coinbase Prime/Custody, marking the first on‑chain movement from Collins‑linked wallets in nearly a decade. The operation is being cited as a rare instance of authorities successfully unlocking Bitcoin once assumed lost, and it underscores both the durability of public‑key cryptography—since most lost keys remain irrecoverable—and the growing technical sophistication of specialized cybercrime units. Despite this breakthrough, thousands of BTC connected to the case are still believed to be locked in other wallets, leaving substantial criminal proceeds theoretically under state control but not yet practically accessible.

AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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