The alleged drug dealer lost 52 million euros (over 56 million dollars) in Bitcoin (BTC) after the Irish Supreme Court ruled that these were the proceeds of crime and should be confiscated.
The Independent Local Info Point.ie reported on February 19th that the court found that Clifton Collins was involved in drug trafficking. Collins did not contest the application by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) to seize his assets.
The authorities began investigating Collins when the police found a certain amount of marijuana in his car at a stopover. This led the police to search the address in a village in Galway and found a large number of cannabis plants allegedly linked to Collins.
Collins is believed to have invested in Bitcoin at an early stage and to have made large returns on his investment. CAB imposed a freezing currency on his crypto, trying to ensure that it could not be transferred without judicial approval.
The court decided to consider the investment as income from crime, probably suggesting that the initial investment was money obtained from selling drugs.
The seizure of Bitcoin Collins was largely responsible for the record value of assets acquired by CAB in 2019, totalling 62 million euros (nearly 67 million dollars).
