The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has seized €52million in bitcoin from an alleged drug dealer after the Irish High Court decreed that they were illegal yields.
The alleged drug dealer, Clifton Collins, did not question the Criminal Assets Bureau’s (CAB) judgment after the seizure of the investments.
The police had discovered cannabis in Collins’ vehicle, and thereafter, started investigating him.
The investigation led them to scour a house in a village in Galway, where they discovered a huge volume of cannabis plants allegedly tied to Collins.
Collins as a bitcoin believer and early investor
Collins was an early investor of bitcoin. He started this at an early time and he got incredible returns on the investment.
The court’s agreement to term his investment as criminal earnings is an indication that his prior investment was cash gotten through drug deals.
The CAB froze his cryptos so as to make sure it cannot be transferred without the court’s permission.
Collins’ Bitcoin that was seized was mainly accountable for 2019’s record value of assets seized by the CAB, resulting in a total of €62 million (nearly $67 million).
Relationship between cryptocurrencies and narcotic dealers
One reason why crypto and crime are related is that one can hold a crypto address that won’t be traced to one’s identity.
Because of this, authorities are looking for cryptocurrencies in their examinations of drug dealers and online markets for illegal substances.
A similar case to Collins was in October 2018 when a Wisconsin Court ruled that Christopher Bania should give up nearly 17 Bitcoin (worth $150,000 at that period) after pleading guilty to drug dispersion.
Around August, Neil Wals, chief of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Global Cybercrime Program, sternly warned that cryptocurrencies have made battling money laundering considerably tougher.
