Judge Ends One Man’s 11-Year Quest to Recover $765 Million in Bitcoin by Digging Up Dump

A British judge has ruled against a man who wants to dig up a landfill where he claims a hard drive with access to thousands of bitcoins was mistakenly dumped more than 11 years ago.

Since 2013 James Howells is hoping to recover a laptop hard drive he says contains the private key to a cryptocurrency he claims he mined in 2009. Ars wrote about it at the time, noting that the value of one bitcoin has just passed $1,000, making 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million.

The estimated number of bitcoins has changed a bit, with Howells now saying he lost 8,000 bitcoins. The price of Bitcoin exceeded $100,000 last month and was worth over $95,636 as of last Friday, or $765 million for 8,000 bitcoins.

Supreme Court Justice Keizer KC issued his governing last week, siding with the defendant Howells v Newport City Council. Howells had no realistic chance of success at trial, the judge ruled. Howells sought “an order that the defendant either deliver the hard drive or allow his team of experts to excavate the dump to find it, and (in the alternative) compensation equivalent to the value of the bitcoins he no longer has access to.” “

The waste disposal authority owns the rubbish

The council said digging up the landfill site would allow harmful substances to escape into the environment, endangering residents with “potentially serious risks, raising public health and environmental concerns”, the decision said.

The judge found no “reasonable grounds for bringing this case”, saying it had “no realistic prospect of success if it went to trial and that there was no other compelling reason to dismiss it at trial”. It granted summary judgment for the defendant, dismissing the claim.

The decision cited the Pollution Control Act 1974 which states that “anything supplied to the authority by another person in the course of using the facilities belongs to the authority and may be dealt with accordingly”. Howells “argues that section 14(6)(c) merely says that anything so supplied belongs to the authority but does not say that it shall cease to belong to its former owner,” the judgment said. The judge disagreed, writing that “the words “shall belong to the authority” are unqualified and open-ended.”

The judge found no reason to find that the defendant who retained the hard drive was “unconscionable” under the law. “In my view, there is no realistic prospect of finding that the defendant’s retention of the hard drive was unconscionable. The defendant did not withhold it for profit or because he wanted it. He detained it because it was buried in the landfill,” the ruling said.

Statute of Limitations

The claim is also barred by the six-year statute of limitations because Howells “knew the facts material to his claim by November 2013 but did not commence proceedings until May 2024,” the ruling said.

The judge did not have to rule on whether the hard drive actually contained access to bitcoin, saying “the only relevant questions in this case relate to ownership and access rights to the hard drive.” Howells has been asking for access to the landfill in Newport, Wales, since November 2013, but local authorities have refused. He says the hard drive is 2½ inches in size and has a wallet.dat file containing a private key that can allow access to bitcoin.

The city council said the excavation would breach the conditions of its NRW (Natural Resources Authority for Wales) licence, cause health and safety risks to staff, risk damage from ground movement during or after excavation and prevent council to “release ) its statutory waste disposal functions while the site is excavated.”