The Man Who Accidentally Throwed A Hard Drive Containing 500 Million Dollars of Bitcoin Into the Trash Filed a Lawsuit Against the Municipality

39-year-old IT engineer James Howells accidentally threw 8,000 items into a recycling center in 2013. Bitcoin (BTC) He filed a £495 million lawsuit against Newport Council to get his hard drive back.

Howells Files a Lawsuit and Asks the Municipality to Allow the Search of the Area Where the Hard Drive Containing Bitcoin Was Found

Howells’ court action is his “last resort” to force the council to agree to an excavation of the dump where he believes the driver was found.

Court documents reveal Howells is seeking damages reflecting the peak value of his Bitcoin holdings earlier this year. However, Howells insists the lawsuit is merely a strategy to persuade the city to allow an investigation of the landfill, which he proposes to carry out at no cost. Howells has set up a team of experts to carry out the £10m dig and is offering Newport Council 10% of the value of the coins, which could be worth tens of millions of pounds if found.

The case is scheduled to be heard in December. Howells expressed frustration at being “largely ignored” by the council for more than a decade. “If they had talked to me in 2013, Newport would look like Dubai now,” he said, touching on the missed economic opportunity.

Howells lost his Bitcoins after accidentally discarding the hard drive during a cleanup in August 2013. Howells stored the private key to the coins he mined in 2009, when Bitcoin was still in its infancy, on this disk. During the cleanup, he mixed up two identical hard drives and put the disk with the BTC data in a garbage bag. Despite his intention to double-check the contents, his then-partner unknowingly took the bag to the recycling centre.

At the time the missing Bitcoins were worth less than £1 million, but within three months their value skyrocketed to £9 million. They are estimated to be worth around half a billion pounds today and Howells believes they could rise even further in the future.

Despite Howells’ repeated requests, the City of Newport has consistently refused to allow Bitcoin mining, citing environmental concerns. The city’s legal team argues that the hard drive now legally belongs to them because it was dumped on their premises. But Howells’ lawyers dispute this, claiming that Howells never intended to abandon the hard drive or its intellectual property.

Howells’ team, which includes the former head of municipal landfill operations, is confident the driver was located in “Cell 2 – Area 2” of the Docksway dump. The team estimates there is an 80% chance of accessing the data if the driver is found. The proposed excavation will take up to three years, followed by additional remediation works, all at no cost to the municipality.

Howells’ team also argues that the excavation project could benefit the council by addressing environmental issues at the site. To conduct the search safely, the team partnered with FLI, a firm specializing in landfill redevelopment. The team plans to use artificial intelligence technology to aid the operation and is committed to modernizing the landfill, which has faced repeated environmental violations since 2020 due to substances such as arsenic, asbestos and methane.

The claim accuses the council of failing to engage with “world-renowned” experts who offer to dispose of hazardous waste and ignoring the potential economic boost from a 10% share of recovered Bitcoins. “This is the kind of money that starts a war and Newport council isn’t even having a conversation about it,” Howells said.

In response, Newport Council described Howells’ claim as “weak” and defended its decision to block the search. A council spokesman said: “Excavation is not possible under our environmental consent and would have a major negative impact on the environment.” The council insists it follows a strict monitoring regime on environmental compliance and argues that Howells’ mention of its breaches is an effort to distract from its “fundamentally weak” claim.

Despite the setbacks, Howells remains determined and says he is ready to take the case to the court of appeals or even the Supreme Court if necessary. “I didn’t want to go to court, but this is my last chance,” said Howells, adding that he was determined to get back his lost Bitcoins and revitalize Newport.

*This is not investment advice.