OG Miner Sues Local Council to Retrieve 8,000 Bitcoin Buried in Landfill

An early Bitcoin miner in Wales is suing the local council to retrieve a hard drive containing the private keys to his 8,000 bitcoins, which was allegedly buried in a landfill in 2013.

According to a report by Wales Online, James Howells has filed a lawsuit against the Newport Council in Wales, seeking court approval to excavate the landfill to potentially recover the hard drive and subsequently regain access to bitcoin valued at more than half a billion dollars.

The report indicates that Howells pursued legal action after a decade of ignored petitions. He reportedly offered to bear the excavation costs and proposed sharing 10% of the retrieved bitcoins with the council, should the recovery prove successful.

Lawyers representing the council argue that the council now legally owns the hard drive, as it was discarded by Howells. In response to Wales Online, the council stated that it had denied Howells’ request multiple times because the excavation is not feasible under the current environmental permit.

Howells, an IT engineer, reportedly started mining bitcoin in 2009 after learning about it on online forums. In 2013, during an equipment clearout, he found two identical hard drives, one of which contained the 8,000 BTC. He mistakenly placed the one with the bitcoin in a bin bag and asked his then-partner to take it to the Newport waste recycling center the following day.

In the lawsuit complaint, Howells reportedly wrote that after his partner declined the request, he made a “mental note” to double-check the hard drives the next day, only to wake up and realize his partner had already taken the bitcoin-containing hard drive to the recycling center.

Initially, the loss of Howells’ bitcoin was a few million dollars. In fact, The Guardian reported on the incident in 2013, stating the loss as 7,500 BTC at that time.

Howells has assembled a team of lawyers to tackle the legal battle and has even recruited the council’s former head of landfill to his team.

“It is what it is. 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. Until the court tells me ‘N-O spells no’, I’m going to keep going. Obviously, my finances are not in the best position at the moment. I’m focusing all my current efforts and resources, including money, on the recovery project. I struggle along in the meantime,” Howells was quoted as saying.