Drug dealer lost $57 million after cleaner throws out Bitcoin access codes in secret hiding place

There's the old maxim 'crime doesn't pay', and most of the time this is absolutely correct.

One Irish drug dealer reckoned he was the exception to this rule, until a cleaner ended up losing him $57 million in bitcoin.

Clifton Collins, from Crumlin, Dublin, had made a fortune worth around $56.7 million dollars from selling cannabis. That's a lot of cannabis.

Hiding that much money from the authorities is no mean feat. It's not like you can just walk into a high street bank and stick it all in an ISA.

As a way round this, Collins had transferred the money into Bitcoin, buying it between 2011 and 2012.

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin lend themselves well to criminal activity, as they effectively belong to whoever has access to them with fewer measures to trace them.

This makes them much easier to conceal than transactions in regular currency.

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There's just one problem. In order to have your Bitcoin, you have to be able to access whatever hard drive it has been placed on.

If you can't do that, you're out of luck. And in Collins' case, he couldn't just ring up the help desk and get sent a password reminder by email.

Unfortunately for the dealer, his entire multi-million dollar fortune was lost, after a cleaner threw out the access codes.

Imagine that at the end of Breaking Bad, Walter White loses the $80 million of drug money, because he lost his passwords. Not quite the same as as burying it in the desert.

When the police caught up with Collins in 2017, Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) tried to access the accounts, but also found themselves locked out of the multi-million dollar fortune.

So where are the access codes? Well, Collins had concealed them inside a fishing rod in his home.

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In a twist of fate even The Godfather himself couldn't anticipate, a cleaner hired by Collins' landlord to clear out his flat threw out the rod containing the codes, thinking it was trash.

The rod has now been incinerated, and with it any hopes that the authorities can access the money.

Collins had transferred the funds into 12 different accounts, and then printed out the passwords for them onto a piece of paper, which was rolled up inside the fishing rod. As innocuous hiding places go, it makes a lot of sense.

As for losing the money, Collins said he considers it to be a punishment for his own stupidity.

Before cannabis, Collins was a renowned beekeeper who won awards for his honey. But he soon turned his attention to something a bit more potent than honey.

Other bitcoin accounts valued at around $1.6 million have been seized, but the main stash, the largest in CAB history, remains locked away.

Collins was sentenced to five years in prison. With bitcoin having plummeted in value since his arrest, his ill-gotten crypto gains have now dwindled to just $28,000.