Ireland Recovers Another 500 Bitcoin From Drug Dealer’s Lost Crypto Stash

TLDR

• Irish Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) seized a third batch of 500 BTC worth ~$31 million on July 2, 2026
• Total recovered from the Clifton Collins case now stands at 1,500 BTC (~$92 million)
• Europol provided technical decryption support to crack the wallet
• Collins bought 6,000 BTC in 2011–2012 for a few dollars each; private keys were lost in a landfill
• Around 4,500 BTC worth over $275 million remains locked in nine untouched wallets

Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau has seized another 500 Bitcoin from a drug trafficker’s decade-old crypto stash, bringing the total recovered in 2026 to 1,500 Bitcoin worth more than $92 million.

Third Wallet Cracked With Europol’s Help

The latest seizure happened on July 2, 2026, with Bitcoin trading near $61,749. That put the value of the new batch at around $30.9 million.

Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre provided the technical support that made it possible. The agency hosted meetings at its headquarters in The Hague and supplied decryption resources to Irish investigators.

CAB has not publicly explained the exact method used to access the wallets. That is standard practice while the case is still active.

This is the third successful recovery from a set of 12 wallets originally holding 6,000 Bitcoin. CAB recovered 500 Bitcoin in March and another 500 in May before this latest batch.

The Story Behind the Lost Bitcoin

The wallets belong to Clifton Collins, a Dublin man convicted in 2017 for running an indoor cannabis operation across three counties in Ireland.

Collins bought roughly 6,000 Bitcoin in late 2011 and early 2012, when the price was just a few dollars per coin. He split the holdings across 12 wallets and printed the private keys on paper.

He hid those keys inside the aluminum cap of a fishing rod case at a rented property in County Galway.

After his arrest, the landlord cleared the property and sent the contents to a landfill. The fishing rod case, and the keys inside it, went with them.

Collins told investigators he lost access to the bulk of his Bitcoin. For years, authorities treated most of the stash as unrecoverable.

A High Court order around 2019 confirmed the holdings as proceeds of crime, but CAB could not move the coins at the time.

Onchain records show no activity from the wallets between Collins’ 2017 arrest and the first recovery in March 2026.

What Remains Locked

Nine of the 12 wallets remain outside CAB’s reach. They hold an estimated 4,500 Bitcoin worth more than $275 million at current prices.

CAB still controls the wallets under the existing confiscation order and continues working to access them.

Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence has been tracking the wallet cluster and flags each new movement as it happens.

Recovered coins have been moved to institutional custody ahead of eventual liquidation.

Before this case, CAB had sold roughly €6.5 million worth of crypto across all prior cases over a decade. The Collins recoveries already far exceed that figure.

A full recovery of the original 6,000 Bitcoin would rank among the largest crypto forfeitures by any law enforcement agency in Ireland.

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