Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), with support from Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, has secured a second 500 BTC wallet linked to convicted drug trafficker Clifton Collins, bringing the total recovered from the long-dormant stash to 1,000 BTC. The latest 500 bitcoin, worth approximately $38.7 million at the time of the move, was transferred to a Wintermute-linked Binance deposit address, according to blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence.
The case traces back to Collins, who purchased 6,000 BTC in late 2011 and early 2012 using proceeds from cannabis sales when bitcoin traded around $5. He stored printed private keys inside a fishing rod case at a rented property in County Galway. After his 2017 arrest, the property was cleared, and the fishing gear — along with the keys — was believed to have been discarded at a landfill.
Europol hosted operational meetings in The Hague and provided “highly complex technical expertise and decryption resources” that enabled investigators to access the wallet. This followed an earlier breakthrough in March 2026, when 500 BTC from the same cluster was moved to Coinbase Custody. Arkham now labels 5,000 BTC as still lost, leaving the larger cache under market watch.
The recovery demonstrates that even long-lost criminal crypto assets remain enforcement targets, with funds capable of re-entering observable on-chain flows when authorities gain access.
