Ireland Recovers $35M in Bitcoin Seized from Convicted Cannabis Grower

Nearly a decade after Irish cannabis cultivator Clifton Collins lost access to 6,000 Bitcoin worth approximately €360 million, law enforcement has finally broken through. On March 24, Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), in coordination with Europol, successfully moved 500 BTC on-chain — marking the first recovered portion of one of crypto's most unusual lost fortune stories.

Collins, a Dublin-based security guard turned large-scale cannabis grower, accumulated most of his Bitcoin between 2011 and 2012 when prices were still in single digits. He funded these purchases through cannabis cultivation operations spread across multiple Irish counties. As his holdings grew in value, he split 6,000 BTC equally across 12 wallets, printing the private keys on a single sheet of paper stored inside a fishing rod case at his Galway residence.

His downfall came in 2017 when a routine traffic stop led to his arrest. After his conviction, his landlord cleared the rental property, sending everything — including the fishing rod case — to a landfill. With the only copy of the private keys likely destroyed, the Irish High Court ordered the Bitcoin confiscated in 2020, but authorities had no way to access the funds.

That changed when Europol provided what it described as "highly complex technical expertise and decryption resources." While no specific method has been officially disclosed, analysts suggest investigators may have either brute-forced a weak wallet password or exploited a flawed key generation tool that produced predictable outputs.

Authorities are reportedly confident the same technique can unlock all 12 wallets. A full recovery would give the Irish state the entire 6,000 BTC — the largest single asset seizure in CAB's history and a landmark moment for global cryptocurrency law enforcement efforts.