Ireland's CAB Cracks Third Bitcoin Wallet, Recovers $31 Million From Cannabis Grower
Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has recovered another 500 bitcoin from a wallet dormant for nearly a decade, bringing its 2026 total from a single cannabis dealer’s stash to 1,500 BTC, worth over $92 million at current prices. The latest breach occurred around July 2, with bitcoin trading near $61,749, valuing the tranche at about $30.9 million. Combined with recoveries in March and May, each of roughly 500 BTC, the running total now stands at 1,500 BTC.
The bureau, working with Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, has now accessed three of 12 wallets tied to Clifton Collins, a Dublin man convicted in 2017 for running an indoor cannabis operation across three counties. Each wallet held roughly 500 BTC. Officials credit Europol with hosting meetings in The Hague and supplying decryption resources that made the breach possible. CAB has not disclosed the technical method, standard practice during an active case.
According to a 2020 report from the Irish Times, Collins worked as a security guard and beekeeper before shifting to cannabis cultivation full-time around 2005. He rented grow sites in Cornamona, Kells, and Drumlish, harvesting roughly every 16 weeks and selling to dealers in Dublin. A Garda patrol spotted his Lexus parked in the Wicklow Mountains at 2:30 a.m. on February 7, 2017, leading to a search that turned up cannabis worth about €2,000. That stop led investigators to his Galway property, where they found more than 500 plants worth roughly €406,000.
Collins bought about 6,000 BTC in late 2011 and early 2012, when bitcoin traded for a few dollars. He split the holdings across 12 wallets and printed the private keys on paper, which he hid inside the aluminum cap of a fishing rod case at his rental property. After his arrest, the landlord cleared the property and sent the contents to a landfill. Collins told CAB investigators he lost access to the bulk of his bitcoin, and for years authorities treated most of the stash as unrecoverable.
A High Court order around 2019 confirmed the holdings as proceeds of crime and directed their confiscation, even though CAB could not yet move the coins. Collins had already surrendered smaller amounts of bitcoin with recoverable keys, along with other assets including a gyroplane, a fishing boat, and a camper van, netting the state about €1.2 million years before the larger wallets became relevant. During interviews, Collins attributed his cannabis operation to what he called ‘stupidity’ and ‘addiction.’ He served part of a five-year sentence under the Misuse of Drugs Act, with a portion suspended.
Onchain records show no activity from the wallets between Collins’ 2017 arrest and the first recovery in March 2026. This supports the account that CAB lacked access rather than sitting on keys it chose not to use. CAB officials have described the years of holding a confiscation order on an asset they could not touch as its own kind of frustration, as bitcoin’s price kept climbing while the wallets stayed sealed.
Nine of the 14 wallets, holding an estimated 4,500 BTC worth over $275 million, remain outside CAB’s reach. The bureau continues working to access them under the existing confiscation order. Before this case, CAB had sold roughly €6.5 million worth of cryptocurrency across all prior cases over a decade. The Collins recoveries already dwarf that figure, and a full recovery of the original 6,000 BTC would rank among the largest crypto forfeitures by any law enforcement agency in Ireland. The case serves as a reminder that coins written off as permanently lost can still surface years later, particularly when a government agency has the wallet under legal control and the resources to keep trying.