The 52 million euros that the Irish police cannot confiscate

The 52 million euros that the Irish police cannot confiscate
fishing rod. Image by Finland Lakeland via Flickr.com. License: Creative Commons

An Irish drug dealer has accumulated a fortune in Bitcoin by investing early. Two years after his arrest, the Irish police obtained a court decision that allows her to confess the coins. Now she is facing a completely different obstacle ..

Sometimes there is no hiding behind a message what is at first glance in it. And sometimes it is exactly this space between message and reality that brings the most interesting knowledge. So it is about a message from Ireland.

The Irish Mirror reports that the Criminal Assets Bureau of Ireland (CAB) confiscated from a drug dealer bitcoins worth 52 million euros. According to the Mirror, the dealer, Clifton Collins, used so much electricity for its cannabis farm that it almost paralyzed the national power grid.

Collins was arrested in early 2017 when the police in a jeep with cannabis worth around 2.Has caught 000 euros. The following investigations led to a cannabis farm in Galway with plants worth almost half a million euros. During this study, the police also discovered that the dealer over 6.000 Bitcoins, which today corresponds to a good 52 million euros.

The 6.000 Bitcoin had not earned Collins by selling drugs, but bought as an early adopter from Bitcoin. The great assets therefore do not indicate a correspondingly large dealer, but is due to a clever investment. The dealer probably had the pleasure of getting to know Bitcoin’s power early on and investing in the cryptocurrency accordingly.

The dealer was arrested, sentenced to five years in prison, and a court forbade him to issue the bitcoins. Now the country’s supreme court has allowed the CAB, the 6.000 Bitcoins to pull in. Probably because the original investment was financed by criminal activities, and the state as a result of any profit that grows out of it, also regarded as its ownership. The 6.000 Bitcoin are the greatest confiscation that the CAB has carried out since 1996. In the annual state income of around 100 billion euros, this is a rather small sum of around 0.05 percent – but still a not completely insignificant value of bitcoins that the Irish state can add to its portfolio.

However, the story does not end here – but only begins. Because the matter of confiscation is not quite as simple as expected. The CAB has the permission of the Supreme Court – but it alone does not give any access to the coins. As the Irish Times reports, Collins briefly – or shortly after? -his arrest creates a paper wallet: a DIN A4 paper on which the keys for the 6.000 Bitcoin were printed.

He kept this paper in the aluminum box, in which he also kept his fishing rod in his apartment. After he was arrested, his landlord cleared the apartment and disposed of the ownership of the dealer. The clearing -out people remember fishing accessories, but explained that the waste to Germany and China was sent to recycling. Collins expressed his anger towards the police, but also said that he had already passed the loss. This should currently see less relaxed the CAB, which has received the court order for confiscation, but is unable to carry it out.

At this point you can of course make some speculation. Collins had time after his arrest to generate a paper wallet? If he did it before-how did the police know from his Bitcoin treasure? He had a watch-only wallet on his PC?

And, in general: How does the police know that Collins said the truth? Anyone who prints 52 million euros on a paper sheet that they only keep in a simple copy in an aluminum can in which fishing rods are-objects that are made to come into contact with water, which in turn has a highly harmful influence on paper? Rather, it would be conceivable that Collins still has a paper wallet – maybe he knows a seed? Or that he kept copies of the wallets in a locker or with a friend, and is now looking forward to the fact that he will return to his freedom after the end of his detention as a multimillionaire?

It would be conceivable that Bitcoin made it impossible for the police here to confiscate values ​​- even though the police have the coins right in front of their nose. As part of a rule of law, the police would then have no way to prevent the dealer from leaving the prison after being served as a rich man. It would be an idea that is equally impressive how terrible.