The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), working with Europol and its European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), has seized approximately €30 million worth of cryptocurrency, marking a significant development in the long-running case involving Irish drug trafficker Clifton Collins.
Authorities confirmed that investigators successfully gained access to a cryptocurrency wallet containing 500 Bitcoin (BTC) believed to be proceeds of crime. The seizure follows years of efforts by Irish law enforcement to recover digital assets connected to Collins’ darknet drug trafficking activities.
Europol played a key role in the operation by hosting multiple coordination meetings at its headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, while also providing technical expertise and decryption resources to support investigators and analysts from the Criminal Assets Bureau.
The breakthrough comes after nearly a decade of uncertainty surrounding Collins’ Bitcoin holdings.
Following his arrest in 2017, authorities discovered that Collins had accumulated approximately 6,000 BTC through drug sales on darknet marketplaces. However, access to the funds appeared impossible after the private keys required to unlock the wallets were reportedly lost.
According to court records, the keys were stored on paper and hidden inside a fishing rod case. After Collins’ arrest, many of his belongings were mistakenly sent to a landfill, leading both authorities and Collins himself to believe the cryptocurrency fortune had been permanently lost.
Despite an Irish court ordering the confiscation of the Bitcoin assets, enforcement proved impossible for years because the wallets remained inaccessible without the private keys.
Recent on-chain data from blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence revealed activity linked to Collins’ wallets.
The firm reported that 500 BTC, worth roughly $35.4 million, was transferred on March 24 at 12:51 UTC, marking the first movement from the long-dormant wallets in nearly ten years. The funds were reportedly transferred to infrastructure associated with the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.
While authorities have successfully seized the 500 BTC, blockchain data indicates that wallets linked to Collins may still contain around 5,500 BTC, currently valued at roughly $389 million.
The development highlights both the challenges and evolving capabilities of law enforcement in tracking and recovering illicit cryptocurrency assets, while raising new questions about the status and future movement of the remaining Bitcoin tied to the case.
