Ireland Unlocks 500 BTC From Seized Drug Case Wallet

• 500 BTC worth around $35 million moved on March 24 as Irish authorities unlocked a long-dormant wallet.
• The wallet is part of a 6,000 BTC stash seized in 2019 but long locked without keys.
• This is the first successful access, with 5,500 BTC still frozen but now likely recoverable.

Irish authorities have moved 500 BTC worth roughly $35 million after unlocking a wallet tied to convicted Dublin cannabis grower Clifton Collins.

The transfer took place on March 24 and marked the first movement from a group of wallets that had remained untouched since 2016.

The funds were sent to Coinbase Prime as part of a controlled law enforcement operation. This was not a market-driven transfer but a seizure.

First Wallet Accessed After Years of Deadlock

Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), working with Europol, gained access to one of 12 wallets that together hold 6,000 BTC. These wallets were seized in 2019 but remained inaccessible due to missing private keys.

At the time of the original seizure, the full 6,000 BTC stack was worth about €53 million. That figure has now climbed to approximately €360 million.

This is the first time CAB has successfully accessed any portion of the seized holdings. The remaining 5,500 BTC are still locked.

Lost Keys and the Fishing Rod Case

Collins built his Bitcoin position between 2011 and 2012 using proceeds from cannabis operations across Ireland. He bought early, when Bitcoin traded in single digits, and later split the holdings into 12 wallets, each holding 500 BTC.

He stored the private keys on a printed sheet and hid them inside a fishing rod case at a rented property in Galway.

In 2017, Collins was arrested after a traffic stop uncovered cannabis. After his arrest, the rental property was cleared. The fishing rod case was either discarded or destroyed. Collins later claimed a burglary may also have led to the loss.

Without the keys, the funds became inaccessible. Even after a High Court order in 2020 allowed the state to confiscate the Bitcoin, authorities had no way to move it.

The breakthrough came with help from Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre. Investigators used advanced decryption and technical tools to unlock one wallet.

Authorities have not disclosed the exact method, but there could be two possible paths. One is brute-forcing a weak password tied to an encrypted wallet file. Another is exploiting flawed key generation, where predictable patterns allow reconstruction of private keys.

The same method is now expected to be applied to the remaining wallets.

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