Irish Drug Dealer’s £46m Bitcoin Codes Lost

On getting caught with cannabis worth €2,000 in his car Clifton Collins an Irish drug dealer, was later arrested and was sentenced to jail for five years. Collins printed the codes of bitcoin, which he owned illegally. He hid it in an aluminum cap of a fishing rod and kept it in his rented house at County Galway. Meanwhile, after Collins got arrested, his Galway house landlord dumped his belongings. The codes Collins printed are now missing, and there is no access to his accounts. 

As per the reports, the workers who dumped the waste told the Irish police force that they remember noticing a fishing gear disposed of. The Irish dump is taken to China and Germany to be reduced to ashes, and even after investigating till there, the fishing rod was never found.

Clifton Collins, an Irish drug dealer, was in search of a place to hide illegally owned €55m (£46m) bitcoin. On finding a solution for that, he came upon the conclusion to print them on an A4 size piece of paper and put aside in an aluminum cap of a fishing rod case which was kept at his rented home in Farnaught, Cornamona, County Galway.

The Dublin high court declared this week that Collins has handed over the account because there were earnings from an unlawful act. These proceedings were used by Collins to buy 6,000 bitcoins around the year 2011-2012. And that was the time when the cryptocurrency was emerging at the value of $5.

To keep his funds secure from hackers, Collins distributed it amongst 12 accounts, each comprising of 500 bitcoins. Lately, which got stored in probably the most expensive aluminum caps now. As per the Irish police force’s investigation, they believe Collins has now genuinely lost the codes.

On catching hold of Collins and getting his account seized, the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau speculated that the Irish State has got their hands on a jackpot but as the Irish Police’s spokesperson said, “The mnemonic key for the bitcoin is unable to be accessed at this stage.” The officials are still hoping to gain access to the account someday. Collins still has codes to additional bitcoin accounts, which has a value of around €1.5m along with this; the other €100,000 in cash has been seized.