Hard Drive Tossed in Landfill With Bitcoin Now Worth $800 Million. Lawsuits Continue

11 years ago his hard drive ended up in a U.K. landfill — with 8,000 bitcoin. It's now worth $800 million... and James Howell wants it back.

The Guardian reports that his 'bid to become extremely rich reached a judge on Tuesday with a team of lawyers arguing that it was still possible to launch a hunt for his missing hard drive containing the bitcoin.'

They claimed that rather than searching for a 'needle in a haystack', the position of the bitcoin hoard had been narrowed down to a small area and there was a 'finely tuned' plan to retrieve it... [Howells] has been asking Newport city council for help in getting the hard drive back, and even said he would share the money with the authority, to no avail... James Goudie KC, representing the council, said Howells had no legal claim to the hard drive. He said: 'Anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council's ownership.'

Goudie said Howells' offer to share some of the bitcoin with Newport council amounted to a bribe. He said: 'He is trying to buy something the council is not in a position to sell....' Before the hearing, a spokesperson for Newport council said: 'The council has told Mr Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. 'Responding to Mr Howells' baseless claims are costing the council and Newport taxpayers time and money which could be better spent on delivering services.'


Howells was 28 when he lost the hard drive, and has said he may as well keep trying to recover it — because he'll always know that it's out there. Howells' legal teams are 'working pro bono,' the article notes, 'on the basis that they get a share of the bitcoin profits if successful...' And TechSpot points out that 'There's also the question of whether the data on the drive would still be accessible after more than a decade of sitting under a pile of rotting garbage.

'Howells has a team of data recovery engineers who are also working pro bono...'

Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.