Irish drug dealer loses £46m bitcoin codes he hid in fishing rod case

A jailed Irish drug dealer has lost his ill-gotten £46million Bitcoin fortune after the piece of A4 paper he had the access codes on and hid for safekeeping was 'thrown out' by his ex-landlord.

Clifton Collins, 49, had stashed the codes in the aluminium lid of a fishing rod case at his rented home in Farnaught, Cornamona, County Galway.

After he was arrested for having £1,500 worth of cannabis in his car and sentenced to five years in jail, his landlord cleared out the house.

The fishing rod case was sent to be incinerated. The missing codes have not been found.

Since then, the value has rocketed, and currently sits at £7,427.43 per coin.

Irish police have been frantically searching for the codes. Officers visited the dump where workers said they remembered seeing discarded fishing gear, but that it had probably now been shipped to Germany or China for destruction.

The Irish Criminal Assets Bureau had seized the Bitcoin after applying to take ownership of them as a forfeit under the proceeds of his crime.

However, they have been unable to access them.

Officers are hoping that advances in technology will eventually enable them to access the accounts.