James Howells is on a mission to recover the Bitcoin hard drive, even enlisting the help of NASA data recovery engineers
A man is suing his local council for $648 million and won’t stop until the court says ‘N-O spells no’.
We’ve all been there – sort of – throwing away that old pair of jeans or handbag and our stomachs dropping as we’re walking along the road days later after realizing we may’ve left a tenner in them.
One man had this but on a monumental scale, with his partner accidentally throwing away a hard drive which contained 8,000 Bitcoin on – now worth a staggering amount today.
James Howells, from Newport, Wales, had been sorting out his home office space in 2013, leaving various items in a black bag in his hallway.
Believing it was trash, his partner took it with her on a trip to the dump, unaware the bag actually contained Howell’s hard drive on which all his Bitcoin were stored.
The 39-year-old computer expert immediately called Newport City Council and asked to come and try and find the bag to get the hard drive and get it back, alas, the council said no.
A 10-year battle has ensued, with Howells reportedly even going as far as enlisting the help of NASA data recovery engineers, top barristers and the council’s own former head of its waste services – who actually helped ‘bury’ the hard drive when he worked for the council all those years ago.
He’s also filed a $648m (£495,314,800) writ to retrieve the hard drive which is estimated to be worth $514.37 million at the time of writing.
Howells is arguing it would cost $13 million to dig up the section of the landfill site where he’s pinpointed the hard drive should be located – Cell 2 – Area 2.
He’s accused the council of potentially not being ‘a fit and competent landfill operator’ alleging the site has been in breach of environmental regulations for four years, subsequently offering he’ll help ‘modernise’ the site if the council allows him to dig up the drive too.
He reflected: “I could spend the rest of my life working nine-to-five and thinking about it every day. I might as well spend my time trying to recover this simple piece of metal.”
Howells resolved despite ‘all’ his ‘current efforts and resources including money’ going into the project leaving him ‘struggl[ing] along’ he’s ‘going to keep going’ until the court tells him ‘N-O spells no’.
“The legal effort is covered. We’re willing to go all the way to the appeals court, the Supreme Court,” he said. “With a case of this magnitude I’m expecting to go the full distance. I didn’t really want to go to court but this is the final shot.”
And the council has since responded.
A spokesman for Newport Council reiterated the council has told Howells ‘multiple times’ an 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’.
They added the council is the ‘only body authorised to carry out operations on the site’ and ‘follows a strict monitoring and reporting regime for all environmental parameters’ which it ‘frequently’ reports to the regulator.
“In common with other waste disposal authorities, exceedances of some of the levels do occur from time to time and these are logged in Natural Resources Wales’ compliance reports,” they continued. “Our monitoring and reporting regime is not related to Mr Howells’ claim and we believe the mention of it is nothing more than an attempt to draw attention away from a fundamentally weak claim which we are vigorously resisting.”
The spokesperson resolved: “Yet again responding to Mr Howells’ baseless claims are costing the council and Newport taxpayers time and money which could be better spent on delivering services.”