An alleged drug dealer lost 52 million euro (over $56 million) in Bitcoin (BTC) afterwards the Irish High Court ruled that they were criminal proceeds and should be confiscated.

Local news outlet Independent.ie reported on Feb. xix that the court accepted that Clifton Collins was involved in drug trafficking. Collins did not competition the Criminal Avails Bureau'south (CAB) awarding for the seizure of his assets.

Government began investigating Collins when police institute a quantity of cannabis in his vehicle during a traffic stop. This led police force to search an address in a village in Galway and detect a big number of cannabis plants, allegedly linked to Collins.

Collins was an early investor

Collins is believed to take invested in Bitcoin at an early on stage and received great returns on his investment. The CAB imposed a freeze on his cryptocurrency in an attempt to ensure that it could not exist moved without the courtroom's approval.

The court decided to consider the investment as criminal proceeds, presumably implying that the initial investment was money obtained through drug sales.

The seizure of Collins' Bitcoin was largely responsible for 2022's record value of avails seized by the CAB, amounting to €62 meg (about $67 million) in total.

Cryptocurrencies and drug dealers

The correlation between cryptocurrencies and crime is largely caused by their permissionless nature and the ability to hold a crypto address that is non linked to ane's identity.

As such, authorities are increasingly finding cryptocurrencies in their investigations of drug dealers and online markets for illicit substances. In Oct 2022, Christopher Bania was ordered by a Wisconsin court to surrender well-nigh 17 Bitcoin (worth $150,000 at the time) afterwards pleading guilty to drug distribution.

At the stop of August, Neil Wals, chief of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Law-breaking Global Cybercrime Program, warned that cryptocurrencies have made combating money laundering significantly harder.