Irish Police Crack First of 12 Bitcoin Wallets in $418M Drug Seizure

Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has gained entree to a Bitcoin wallet containing astir 500 BTC, worthy astir $34 cardinal (€30 million), marking the archetypal palmy breach of 12 wallets seized from a convicted cause trader successful 2019 that person since ballooned to $418 cardinal (€360 million) successful value.

The breakthrough came done an cognition supported by Europol's European Cybercrime Centre, which provided "highly analyzable method expertise and decryption resources captious to the occurrence of the operation," according to a Garda connection shared with the Irish Times. The 500 BTC, valued astatine astir $71,000 each astatine clip of publication, correspond "the proceeds of crime," CAB confirmed.

Per reports successful section media, the wallets belonged to Clifton Collins, a 55-year-old erstwhile beekeeper who was jailed for 5 years aft increasing cannabis successful rented houses and selling the harvested cause to criminals. Collins had invested proceeds from his cause concern successful Bitcoin from 2011 erstwhile the cryptocurrency traded betwixt $0.30 and $29, and ended the twelvemonth trading astatine $4.72.

Collins created 12 wallets to store his increasing Bitcoin luck and recorded the backstage keys successful a papers hidden successful a sportfishing rod lawsuit astatine a rented spot successful Co Galway. In interviews with gardaí, helium claimed helium ne'er saw the lawsuit again aft a break-in astatine his home, though reports indicated a clear-out of the spot aft his apprehension whitethorn person resulted successful the loss. The archetypal seizure successful 2019 was valued astatine $61 cardinal (€53 million).

In its 2023 yearly report, the CAB noted that immoderate $1.3 cardinal (€1.2 million) was recovered from Collins aft assets including 89 BTC on with “a sportfishing boat, a Gyro plane, metallic detector, electrical bicycle and assorted centrifugal vehicles” were confiscated.