Irish authorities have unlocked $35.5 million worth of Bitcoin from a cryptocurrency wallet seized in a major criminal asset case.
The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), with technical support from Europol, accessed one of 12 wallets confiscated in 2019. The wallet held approximately 500 Bitcoin-now valued at $35.5 million-previously inaccessible after private keys were lost.
The keys had been stored in a fishing rod case that disappeared, locking authorities out of a total of 6,000 Bitcoin, now worth roughly €360 million.
The assets are tied to Clifton Collins, a convicted drug trafficker who began investing in Bitcoin as early as 2011-2012. He reportedly split his holdings across multiple wallets and recorded all access codes in a single document that was later lost.