PAPER WALLET: FISHING VICTIM (sic).....

[tmfp]

A drug dealer who amassed a €55 million fortune in the cryptocurrency bitcoin has lost the codes to access the accounts after hiding them with his fishing rod, which has now gone missing.

The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) has confiscated the 12 online accounts, or wallets, containing 6,000 bitcoin. However, The Irish Times has learned the accounts cannot be accessed because the codes are missing.
It means the €53.6 million monetary value of the bitcoin inside them, which is the biggest case in the Cab’s 25-year history, is out of the bureau’s reach.
Garda officers said they were hopeful advances in technology would one day enable them to access the bitcoin so it could be sold.

Clifton Collins (49), originally from Crumlin, Dublin, bought most of the bitcoin in late 2011 and early 2012 using cash he made growing crops of cannabis. The crypto currency has soared in value since then. Collins spent some of his money buying a two-seater gyro plane and learning how to fly it.
In early 2017 he had just over 6,000 bitcoin in one account but he feared it may be too easy for a hacker to access. He decided to spread his wealth across 12 new accounts and transferred exactly 500 bitcoin, worth almost €4.5 million, into each of them.
Collins then printed out the codes for the 12 accounts onto an A4 piece of paper. He hid the paper inside the aluminium cap of his case containing his rod which he kept at his rented home in Farnaught, Cornamona, Co Galway.
But when he was arrested with cannabis herb in 2017 in Co Wicklow and jailed for five years, there was a break-in at the house and it was also cleared on behalf of the landlord with many of Collins’s items being taken to a dump in Co Galway.
Workers at the dump told gardaí they remembered seeing discarded fishing gear. However, waste from the dump is sent to Germany and China to be incinerated and the fishing rod case has never been found.

Collins told gardaí he has had time to come to terms with the loss of the money and regarded it as punishment for his own stupidity.

Much of what he has told the Garda has been supported by a range of witnesses, including those who cleared his house, his landlord and others who helped him break up his bitcoin fortune into 12 accounts. Garda believe he has genuinely lost the codes for the accounts, which had not been accessed for a year before he came to the attention of the Garda.
The Dubliner is a former security guard who briefly became a beekeeper and won awards for his honey before he turned his attention to growing cannabis for more than a decade. Collins had much smaller amounts of bitcoin in other accounts, valued at €1.5 million, that the Cab has been able to access. Those bitcoin and more than €100,000 in cash has been seized from him.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/drug-dealer-loses-codes-for-53-6m-bitcoin-accounts-1.4180182
Also
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/chance-encounter-with-garda%C3%AD-unmasked-bitcoin-millionaire-drug-dealer-1.4180140

[LFC_Bitcoin]

He lost all the private keys?

I’m sure he did, haha. At some point in the next 5-10 years those bitcoin’s will magically move from those addresses

 

[fiulpro]

This is actually Karma working .

This is why I am always scared to use the paper wallets , they are actually very fragile , away from the world they are just like money , paper money , but at the same time if someone looses it , there is no way you can get the money back .
I do think that is why paper wallets are very rare and people who use them are actually the only ones who have a lot of money and black at the top .

[LoyceMobile]

Garda officers said they were hopeful advances in technology would one day enable them to access the bitcoin so it could be sold.

Lol. Apart from that not happening, Bitcoin would be worthless if "technology" can recover lost funds.

I wouldn't be surprised if the drug dealer can access his funds when he's in a country without extradition.

[Wexnident]

This is actually Karma working .

This is why I am always scared to use the paper wallets , they are actually very fragile , away from the world they are just like money , paper money , but at the same time if someone looses it , there is no way you can get the money back .
I do think that is why paper wallets are very rare and people who use them are actually the only ones who have a lot of money and black at the top .

They at least provide security against any online dangers, though it just basically swaps the online dangers to the real world dangers. Still, real world dangers could possibly be a lot easier to defend from imo, especially if you know how to take care of stuff quite properly

Lol. Apart from that not happening, Bitcoin would be worthless if "technology" can recover lost funds

Still, wouldn't the idea of BTC being unmoved for a set amount of time returned to the original supply or something be an idea? I don't know much about how it could be implemented though. There are also limitations like if the account is still active, but coins are not moved kind of situation, the coins wouldn't be moved but if the coins aren't being moved and the account isn't being accessed, then the process could go through kind of problems.

[rosezionjohn]

Much Wow! Better bring in those talked about super quantum computers quickly for the sake of recovering these 6,000 bitcoins This must be the second case of confirmed lost bitcoins. Most likely both ending up in a dumpster. Who would think anyone would actually hide his private keys in a fishing rod?

[gentlemand]

Since 6000 BTC was between 12-30,000 Euros ish at that time I see no reason why he linked it to growing pot. He should've said it was from dealing cars or chopping wood. It's just as easy or impossible to prove and just as believable.

And when technology is good enough to reclaim them I think it's safe to assume that some quantumkiddie will be in there long before the Gardai figure it out. That's of course if this story is true which I'm certain it is.

[mk4]

Err.. Assuming that it was legitimately lost and not the, you know, the "lost in a boating accident" approach, a fishing rod's chamber is one of the worst places to leave your backups. I mean, sure no one would probably find it if a person is specifically looking for a paper backup, but it's a fishing rod! A thief could enter your house and see the fishing rod then poof. Lost your rod and your coins. This is once again another proof of how careless as hell people are. Congratulations to the dude working at the junk shop in Germany/China I guess? Hope it gets found lmao.

P.S. When I saw the title, this wasn't the "fishing" I was expecting.

[iluvbitcoins]

Err.. Assuming that it was legitimately lost and not the, you know, the "lost in a boating accident" approach, a fishing rod's chamber is one of the worst places to leave your backups. I mean, sure no one would probably find it if a person is specifically looking for a paper backup, but it's a fishing rod! A thief could enter your house and see the fishing rod then poof. Lost your rod and your coins. This is once again another proof of how careless as hell people are. Congratulations to the dude working at the junk shop in Germany/China I guess? Hope it gets found lmao.

P.S. When I saw the title, this wasn't the "fishing" I was expecting.

Do you seriously believe someone hid their only backup worth 55 million euros inside a fishing rod?
Good coverup story though.

[tmfp]

Apparently, high electricity consumption was mentioned during the case as a flag for the authorities to find out what was going on.
The yellow press have taken this as an opportunity for some anti Bitcoin Mining OMG THE WASTE power consumption bullshit.

But we can reveal they began probing the Dubliner after noticing an energy surge linked to his “mining” of online money.

The ”mining” of cryptocurrency online requires massives amounts of energy.
The complex algorithms and computer power used to generate one unit of the virtual currency could power 30 homes for a day.
Globally, bitcoin mining uses as much energy every year as a country the size of Ireland.

using so much power he almost blew out the national grid.

(I won't link to these worthless rag websites)

This is bollocks for two obvious reasons:
1) Mr.Collins was a Bitcoin OG  who bought his BTC with the cash he earned as a grower. He didn't mine it at all, that I can see.
2) Growing weed is a hi energy consumption industry because lighting and a/c (and most busts are prompted by utility companies or heat signature picked up by LE helos*).

*So I was told by a bloke down the pub.

[YuginKadoya]

If this could be true then he really lost worth $58,300,920.00 USD if all 6000 BTC was really lost, and the other minimum amount of coins was retrieved by the cab then he is really broke but that comes from evil will surely waste instantly without further notice by karma,

But what if there is another flip to the story that Collin is just lying with losing all that money and he hid all of that elsewhere so that he could claim that 6000 BTC when he gets bailed in jail, and by doing this he just want people to think that the harvested money in planting cannabis was really lost so people would believe such lie because Bitcoin is a digital thing that can be lost in the real world if someone lost his private key, access to the hard wallet or cold storage like USB, paper wallet and so on if we are looking to another story that he is really lying at all because anything can really happen and this story may all be made up.

[Kemarit]

Much Wow! Better bring in those talked about super quantum computers quickly for the sake of recovering these 6,000 bitcoins This must be the second case of confirmed lost bitcoins. Most likely both ending up in a dumpster. Who would think anyone would actually hide his private keys in a fishing rod?

I will assume during that time he never taught that the price will be take big specially in 2017.

But the most interesting part is that he said that he is afraid of the hackers, so he decided to use paper wallets to hid his Bitcoin but didn't care of it, LOL, could the story be real? Hmm, we really don't know, maybe when we see the price hitting six figures in the future, we might see it move, 

[mk4]

Do you seriously believe someone hid their only backup worth 55 million euros inside a fishing rod?
Good coverup story though.

I really don't know, because this could definitely easily be a cover up. Pretty hard to tell without really knowing the person in question no? But one thing's for sure, do NOT underestimate the stupidity or carelessness of some people.

[meanwords]

No way. He might have fabricated this story in order to fool the authorities into thinking that he really did lost all of those accounts. I mean we are talking about 55 million here. There's no way that the only way to access it is his fishing rod and he didn't even hid it! Like come on. I'm sure that when he gets out of the radar, those accounts will be accessed and I'm sure he will hid himself in an island or something. The story is just too "fishy" for me (yes, pun intended).

[xvids]

It might just have been a plot because he was caught and now maybe he have some partners that have a copy of it.
We might see some news about that BTC had been moved by an unknown person maybe a couple of years or even months we would see this news.

[sheenshane]

What a dramatic and convincing story right there!

Through that, I have made questions in my mind.

• Is it just me or there is something smelly with this news?
• It seems like the drug dealer is making his way out of the stupid authorities?
• Who really is stupid here anyways?

Me myself considering I'm mediocre wouldn't put my private keys on my fishing rod and miss it. That is the most stupid thing I would do. Considering the fact that the drug dealer made its fortune. It is impossible for him to have that level of IQ. Having a massive drug empire takes a good mind. He's playing it very well right there!

[Lucius]

The term fishing takes on a new meaning in this case, because if so much wealth is hidden in the fishing rod, instead of the fish, the fishermens will start fishing the old fishing rods

Life tells incredible stories, and this is definitely one of them. If you remember the story of that kid who also lost a large amount of BTC on a discarded hard drive, we might ask what is going on in the UK that people do such stupid things? Whether it is water, air or just good quality whiskey

[tmfp]

we might ask what is going on in the UK that people do such stupid things? Whether it is water, air or just good quality whiskey

Lol, good question, but neither Mr. Collins nor Dublin are in the UK.

[Mia44]

I wonder how the managers know where he hid that A4 sheet? It must be from his testimony.
I suppose he is not a fool, he will not print all the private keys of 12 wallets on the same A4 paper and put in an aluminum tube.

[Lucius]

Lol, good question, but neither Mr. Collins nor Dublin are in the UK.

My mistake, I hope the Irish will not mind me moving them to the UK, sometimes it is easy to be confused with Ireland and Northern Ireland (UK). At least I was right about James Howells who lost 7500 BTC, and he was from UK (Newport, South Wales).