IT Engineer Sues City Council for $647M After It Blocks His Attempt to Recover a Hard Drive Containing 8,000 Bitcoin

The drive was mistakenly discarded in 2013. Despite offering the council 10% of the recovered value, the council

An IT engineer from Wales has filed a court claim against Newport City Council for 495 million British pounds (nearly $647 million) in damages after the council blocked his attempts to recover a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin (BTC).

James Howells, a Newport resident, accidentally disposed of the hard drive during a household clearout in 2013. At that time, the BTC was worth about 1 million pounds (around $1.3 million), and its value has since soared to nearly half a billion pounds.

According to WalesOnline, Howells has made several attempts to retrieve the hard drive from the local landfill, but Newport City Council has repeatedly denied his requests to excavate the site. The council has cited environmental concerns as the main reason for their refusal.

Now, Howells has engaged a team of legal experts to file a court claim, which is set to be heard in December. He has offered the council 10% of the recovered Bitcoin’s value if the hard drive is found, but the council has stood firm in its decision.

The landfill in question has been flagged for breaches of its environmental permit, with reports of elevated levels of asbestos, arsenic, and methane. The council has maintained that excavating the site could harm the surrounding area and that their operations follow strict monitoring protocols.

In 2022, Howells proposed an $11 million plan to locate and recover the lost hard drive, which would involve using robots to sift through 110,000 tonnes of garbage at no cost to the council. However, the council has continued to express doubts about the legality and feasibility of Howells’ claims.

To prevent similar incidents, it is essential to securely store hardware wallets, keep private keys safe offline, and back up recovery phrases in multiple secure locations.

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