Svmuu News The Irish Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) announced that, with technical support from Europol's European Cybercrime Centre, it successfully cracked a Bitcoin wallet previously believed to have permanently lost its private key and confiscated 500 BTC from it, worth over $35 million.
The wallet belonged to convicted drug trafficker Clifton Collins. According to reports, between 2011 and 2012, Collins purchased approximately 6,000 BTC using proceeds from drug trafficking, storing them across 12 wallets. He printed the private keys on an A4 sheet of paper and hid it inside the aluminum end cap of a fishing rod box at his rented accommodation. After Collins was arrested and imprisoned in 2017, his landlord discarded the paper while clearing out his belongings, causing the private keys to become lost.
On-chain intelligence platform Arkham data shows that the transferred 500 BTC have been moved to Coinbase Prime, with the related address labeled as "Clifton Collins: Lost Keys." Arkham tracking reveals that Collins has a total of 14 addresses under his name, holding approximately 5,500 BTC, currently valued at over $391 million. The remaining wallets are still pending cracking. (Cointelegraph)