Irish drug dealer loses €55m bitcoin fortune after losing fishing rod case with codes

An Irish drug dealer who amassed illicit €55m bitcoin fortune, lost the codes to access the accounts after hiding them in his fishing rod, which went missing. In 2017, Clifton Collins printed the codes on A4 sheets and hid them in the aluminium cap of a fishing rod case.

Case with the codes taken to a dump

The case with the codes was kept at his rented home in Farnaught, Cornamona, County Galway. According to reports, Collins was busted on a weed charge and sent to jail in 2017. He was sentenced to five years on imprisonment after the authorities found €2,000 worth of cannabis in his car. In the meantime, Collins's landlord had all of his stuff hauled to the dump.

The codes, according to reports are now missing, which means that the account and the money cannot be accessed. Reports have stated that when the Irish police questioned the workers at the dump, they told the officers that they remembered seeing a discarded fishing gear. Waste from the dump travels to China where it is incinerated. The fishing rod case has not been found.

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Collins has reportedly told the officers that he has now come to terms with his loss and considers it to be karma for his own stupidity. The Dublin High Court has ruled that Collins has forfeited the accounts because the money was obtained through crime.

According to reports, Collins began growing cannabis in 2005. He used rented properties around Ireland which included the house where the case with the codes was stashed, to grow cannabis. The profit from cannabis sales helped Collins buy 6,000 bitcoins in late 2011 and early 2012.

While the authorities have confiscated the accounts, but they are unable to access them. The authorities, however, hope to gain access to the accounts one day.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

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