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2020-02-24

Irish Drug Dealer lost crypto keys

Dubliner Clifton Collins, who was recently imprisoned for drug trafficking, claims that thieves took the keys to $56 million in Bitcoin (BTC), which the Irish Supreme Court ruled should be confiscated.

After obtaining more than 6,000 BTCs by 2017, Collins decided to insure himself against hackers by distributing cryptocurrency to 12 newly created accounts. He thus transferred 500 BTC to each of them, as reported by the Irish Times on February 21. This would leave every wallet worth about $4.87 million in the press.

Collins then printed the keys to all 12 of his BTC accounts on a piece of paper, which he claimed he kept in the aluminium cap of his rod case. He kept this in a house he rented in Galway County, Ireland. However, when he was arrested for trading marijuana in 2017, the house was reportedly broken into.

In addition, the landlord asked to clean the house and throw away many of Collins' things. The landfill workers confirmed to the police that they had seen the fishing rod thrown away, but the landfill was further sent to Germany and China. The rod containing the keys to Collins' BTC account was allegedly never found.

It is noteworthy that several alleged witnesses - including those who cleaned the house, the owner, and those who helped Collin to distribute his BTC account to the police - told the same details of what happened to the rented house and the rod.

Collins took note of the loss in his actions, saying that it was punishment for his own stupidity.

In the world of cryptocurrency, there have been a number of cases of codes being lost to users' digital wallets. The infamous Canadian crypto QuadrigaCX exchange lost keys to cold wallets with $145 million worth of digital assets. The exchange's founder, Gerry Cotten, who was allegedly the only wallet and corresponding key controller, died suddenly while travelling to India. After his death, neither officials, nor Cotten's wife, nor the court-appointed monitor - the Big Four Ernst & Young audit firm - were able to locate the keys.