BlockBeats News, March 25 — According to Cointelegraph, earlier today, 500 BTC related to Irish drug traffickers were transferred on-chain after nearly 10 years of silence. Subsequently, the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), with technical support from Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, successfully cracked a Bitcoin wallet previously believed to have its private key permanently lost, and confiscated 500 BTC from it, worth over $35 million.
Convicted drug trafficker Clifton Collins purchased approximately 6,000 BTC with drug proceeds between 2011 and 2012, storing them across 12 wallets. He printed the private keys on an A4 sheet and hid it inside an aluminum end cap of a fishing rod case at his rented residence. After Collins was arrested and imprisoned in 2017, his landlord discarded the sheet while clearing his belongings, resulting in the private key being lost. Collins owns 14 addresses holding about 5,500 BTC, currently valued at over $391 million. The remaining wallets are still awaiting cracking.
In most cases, losing the private key means the wallet cannot be recovered or hacked. Due to the nature of public key cryptography, funds will be permanently inaccessible. The media has contacted the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau and Irish police for comment.
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