For more than ten years, the crypto world assumed Clifton Collins’s Bitcoin was gone. The Irish drug dealer had reportedly tossed the seed phrases to his wallets, and conventional wisdom held that thousands of BTC were rotting in a landfill somewhere alongside the paper they were scribbled on.
Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau, working alongside Europol, has now recovered a second tranche of 500 BTC linked to Collins, worth roughly $38M at current prices. Combined with the first 500 BTC seized in March 2026, that brings the total haul to 1,000 BTC, valued at approximately $73M.
From cannabis farms to crypto forensics
Collins was convicted in 2018 for cannabis cultivation and distribution. Between late 2011 and early 2012, he purchased approximately 6,000 BTC. At the time, Bitcoin was trading in the single digits.
After his conviction, authorities seized various assets but believed most of his Bitcoin was irretrievable. Collins had claimed the seed phrases were lost, and 12 dormant wallets linked to him sat completely inactive for over a decade.
