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Bitcoin The Courts

Man Sues Town for $647 Million Over Trashed Bitcoin Hard Drive (vice.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the never-gonna-give-you-up dept.
smooth wombat writes: In 2013, James Howell's partner inadvertently threw out a hard drive along with other trash. Unknown to this person, this hard drive contained approximately 8,000 bitcoins. For the past decade Howell has been petitioning the town council of Newport to excavate the landfill in the hope of recovering the drive which would now hold approximately $647 million worth of cryptocurrency. Now he is suing the council in an attempt to force them to let him excavate.

Should the hard drive be recovered, Howells thinks there is an 80 percent chance that the coins on it would be retrievable. If it all works out, he has offered the council 10% of the recovered Bitcoin: $65 million worth. But, citing environmental concerns, the council has rejected his proposal to dig through over a decade's worth of garbage. The council issued a report wherein a spokesperson 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. The council is the only body authorized to carry out operations on the site."

Man Sues Town for $647 Million Over Trashed Bitcoin Hard Drive More | Reply

Man Sues Town for $647 Million Over Trashed Bitcoin Hard Drive

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  • proving again (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.

  • Here's an alternative option (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @02:44PM (#64869669)

    Bury that dude in the landfill so he can be reunited with his beloved hard drive.

    • Bury that dude in the landfill so he can be reunited with his beloved hard drive.

      And they say you can’t take it with you, shows what they know!

  • What environmental impact?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @02:47PM (#64869679) Homepage Journal
    Are they serious...?

    How the fuck much damage can someone cause just digging through a fucking landfill/trash heap??

    Will it cause the town to die, catch a cold....have birds fall from the fucking sky?

    Geez, let the guy go dig....shit....his taxes paid for the place, let him go wade through it if he wants....

    • Re:What environmental impact?!?! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @02:52PM (#64869697)

      If some low-rent backhoe operator goes through the liner at the bottom that prevents the landfill waste from leeching into the ground water, they can do quite a bit of ecological damage.

      Please learn something about landfill operations. It's not just a big hole in the ground.

      Also, why is the city / county / state responsible for him and his dipshit associate throwing away something of value? They voluntarily placed it in the municipal waste service's pickup container, which makes it no longer their property anyway.

      This is no different than if some dipshit threw away a check for $100m accidentally, except you can't stop payment and reissue bitcoin. Caveat Emptor, buddy. Sounds like a whole lot of his problem, and none of the city's.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Exactly this, he gave it to the waste collection so it's now the property of the town council to do with as they please.

        He was stupid for not keeping backups of such valuable data.

        • I don't think you understand Bitcoin. A backup is as valuable as the original. It has all of the negatives of cash and all of the negatives of electronic currency. If you have a backup and somebody gets the backup, they get your BTC.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bert64 ( 520050 )

            The backup is not to protect against theft, it's to protect against loss. Loss is what this guy has suffered.

            Encryption protects against theft, and can be another cause of loss if the keys are not properly managed. But this guy's coins have not been stolen, so it's a moot point.

            The council is clearly not interested in trying to recover the hard drive, and we have no idea if it's encrypted or not either.

            • How do we know his coins have not been stolen?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Bert64 ( 520050 )

                Now who's the one that doesn't know how bitcoin works...
                The blockchain is public, if they had been stolen and transferred to another wallet there would be a visible record of that on the blockchain.
                No thief would keep the coins in the original wallet because they have no guarantee the original owner won't have a backup and move them.

        • He was stupid for not keeping backups of such valuable data.

          Stupid shit and accidents happen.

          Still, let the man get a shovel and dig...I mean, it's a big fscking landfill....trash heap....he's not going to cause any sort of biological meltdown that will cause quarantine of the area for miles and miles....

          Besides, who the fuck lives near a trash dump?!!??

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by irving47 ( 73147 )

          It says the HARD DRIVE was thrown away by someone else. Not his computer. Why couldn't the hard drive be considered a backup?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        If some low-rent backhoe operator

        Nope. You've probably already got a team of hobos digging through the trash piles. Just offer a case of mad Dog to whomever locates the disk.

      • Re:What environmental impact?!?! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @03:20PM (#64869835)

        If some low-rent backhoe operator goes through the liner at the bottom that prevents the landfill waste from leeching into the ground water, they can do quite a bit of ecological damage.

        To elaborate, Sanitary landfills are not just places to dump trash and that's it. That liner at the bottom is just one part. Trash is placed and spread out in a layer, then it is covered with regular dirt. There are pipes to collect the methane as well. We might think of it as a garbage lasagna. The issue is that everything that gets excavated has to be replaced. If just excavated then dumped back in willy nillly, it will allow methane to escape, and the landfill won't operate correctly from then on.

        What would be needed is create a temporary landfill beside the old one, then peel the regular landfill back like layers of an onion. So almost certain to dwarf the cost of whatever the idiot had on a hard drive that might be anywhere, and may or may not be recoverable.

        We also have to keep in mind that the trash in the landfill gets compacted with huge bulldozers before putting a dirt layer, then run over again. Even a medium size D-7 dozer is a big heavy chonk. So the hard drive is probably mashed flat by now.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Probably not mashed flat, but cracked and corroded into total unrecoverability.

        • Re:What environmental impact?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @03:41PM (#64869909) Journal

          Right the reality here is doing this right is going to be a very expensive. Everyone around here complains bitterly about how $PARTY should be responsible for externalized costs. So we can't very well say hey this guy should be excused from environmental rules around digging, and disposable procedures.

          Even if he is 'willing to pay for it' that assumes he find ts the disk right? What if he does not or the disk has been destroyed (It probably has)? Then what he declares bankruptcy and the tax payers get left holding the bag! Right? That is his real plan right? It is almost like the council thought this thru when denying the permits.

          Now in fairness I think the council should say - "We will do a study to estimate the entire cost of the project, at your expense if you'd like" When that estimate is known if you are willing to place 140% of that figure in escrow with a third party before the first shovel gets picked up, have it. That way they can be certain the money is there to complete all the cleanup and remediation activities at the outset.

          My guess is Mr.Howell won't find this little expedition so attractive when and neither will any would be creditors when they can't shit a lot of the failure risk onto the town.

      • Oh,is he close to the bottom?

    • Wow. Not even an attempt to find out if what you're suggesting is reasonable. Well done.

      For a similar case, see: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.69033... [www.cbc.ca]

      Searching a landfill is not done by stomping around looking under shit.

      This dingus should be laughed out of the courtroom.

    • Modern landfills are most certainly not "trash heaps". They are carefully designed and engineered to prevent leaching, contamination and outgassing over a long timeframe. They have carefully constructed foundations and plumbing at the bottom with waterproof membranes that must not be punctured.

      What he proposes almost certainly involves creating a whole new landfill and carefully transferring all of the contents to it while looking for this one tiny drive. If he wants to do that, he should find financial bac

      • He needs to go through a decade of trash. Rather than say no to him, they should request a project plan, environmental assessment, and budget estimate for review.

        I bet he can't even handle that reasonable request. And if he does somehow, the plan will be unacceptable. But if it's acceptable, you know he won't have the money to fund it. But if he did, I'd give him the green light - it would be amusing to watch him blow all that money looking for an unreadable drive.

        • >But if it's acceptable, you know he won't have the money to fund it.

          I read about this guy before, he has figured out how to fund it. Basically he partners with investors and promises them X% of the loot. If an investor estimates 20% chance to recover the $650 million, that easily justifies spending $10m on lawyers and trucks etc. As for the rest of your proposal, it is the obvious and well-worn playbook of modern bureaucrats looking to slow things down until the petitioner ages out of trying things.

          • You can't have some random guy moving ten year's worth of trash around without ensuring it is done in a way that doesn't cause more environmental issues than just leaving it in the landfill.

            Ensuring an acceptable project plan exists and that he has money to pay for it is NOT just red tape for the sake of frustrating an inconvenient citizen.

            Sometimes bureaucracy is good and working in the citizens' best interests.

            • You can't have some random guy moving ten year's worth of trash around without ensuring it is done in a way that doesn't cause more environmental issues than just leaving it in the landfill.

              What harm can he do?

              It's not like anyone lives near a trash dump....and ya'll are treating this like if he digs in the wrong place or disturbs it he'll cause the same damage as if he set of a nuclear warhead and made the place uninhabitable for 100's of miles.....

              I seriously doubt a guy can cause THAT much damage...ge

        • He needs to go through a decade of trash. Rather than say no to him, they should request a project plan, environmental assessment, and budget estimate for review.

          I bet he can't even handle that reasonable request. And if he does somehow, the plan will be unacceptable. But if it's acceptable, you know he won't have the money to fund it. But if he did, I'd give him the green light - it would be amusing to watch him blow all that money looking for an unreadable drive.

          This feels like a plotline on Silicon Valley. I'll bet this guy fucks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Modern landfills are most certainly not "trash heaps". They are carefully designed and engineered to prevent leaching, contamination and outgassing over a long timeframe. They have carefully constructed foundations and plumbing at the bottom with waterproof membranes that must not be punctured.

        What he proposes almost certainly involves creating a whole new landfill and carefully transferring all of the contents to it while looking for this one tiny drive. If he wants to do that, he should find financial bac

    • Modern landfills are actually carefully engineered with liners, leeching recovery systems, sandwiched layers of soil and refuse, monitoring wells, sometimes gas recovery systems. Sections are completed and then carefully sealed up to degrade. Open pits of refuse are generally confined to temporary transfer stations, or in poorer nations.

    • Not sure if there's ever been a more appropriate sig for someone.

      Digging in a landfill is not remotely the same as digging a hole in your backyard. You would be digging up tons of decaying food, body parts (unknown to the landfill owner), noxious chemicals (unknown to the landfill owner), who knows what liquids, and a whole host of other dangerous products which people throw away rather than properly disposing of. And this is on top of the usual clothes, plastic and metal products, batteries of all sizes,

      • Digging in a landfill is not remotely the same as digging a hole in your backyard. You would be digging up tons of decaying food, body parts (unknown to the landfill owner), noxious chemicals (unknown to the landfill owner), who knows what liquids, and a whole host of other dangerous products which people throw away rather than properly disposing of. And this is on top of the usual clothes, plastic and metal products, batteries of all sizes, furniture, etc. Where do you propose all this junk gets put as it'

    • Are they serious...?

      How the fuck much damage can someone cause just digging through a fucking landfill/trash heap??

      Will it cause the town to die, catch a cold....have birds fall from the fucking sky?

      Geez, let the guy go dig....shit....his taxes paid for the place, let him go wade through it if he wants....

      Landfills are not just places where we throw trash. Here's an example of modern landfills: https://www.dumpsters.com/blog... [dumpsters.com]

      The trash is layered and filled over. Sanitary landfills do methane collection as well, they are surprisingly precise, and can be wrecked if not arranged properly.

      To excavate, store the excavations temporarily, and create a temporary landfill then continue to excavate until the hard drive he pitched is found - if it is found - he's proposing excavation of the entire landfill, cre

      • So...give. him terms...he can only dig so deep....he cannot sue for exposing himself to anything, etc.

        If he knows when he lost the drive, they should be able to calculate approx how deep to dig....possibly if they are as "precise" as you mention, they might have records to help narrow down WHERE in the dump it might have been dumped and he limits searching there.

        There's no way he's going to fsck things up and turn the area into an apocalyptic zombie waste land for 100's or 1000's of miles....

        And, it's no

  • 1. If trash was sorted before being put in the landfill, they'd've found the drive and put it in e-waste, which means it's likely been shredded
    2. Even if the above isn't true, if it's been sitting under tons of trash for however long, it's probably been contaminated to the point of not being recoverable, or it's just plain been physically damaged to the point of not being recoverable
    • The outer parts of the drive are certainly toast. But the magnetic media in spinning disks is very well sealed and the drive can likely still be read by removing the magnetic plates and using specialized equipment.

  • It makes me wonder sometimes - if you *expect* to make millions mining cryptocurrency, wouldn't it make sense to spend at least a few grand on an offsite backup?

    I mean, if his house had been washed away - like in the recent floods - he'd be in the same situation, except with a smaller chance of actually recovering the data.

    • If you backup your BTC to an offsite backup, somebody will get the data and steal your BTC. It's has all the downsides of cash and all the downsides of electronic currency.

      • It's has all the downsides of cash and all the downsides of electronic currency.

        No, it doesn't have all the downsides of cash.

        Contrary to what most articles are inferring, the bitcoins aren't on Mr. Howells' old hard drive. They're on the blockchain, just like every other bitcoin. Mr. Howells' problem is that he left the only copy of the private key on a hard drive that got tossed, so he has no way to spend the bitcoins in that wallet.

        So it isn't akin to losing bundle of cash in some landfill, but instead that the password to an account was forgotten. And there's no central authority (

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I don't really think that washed away in a flood gives you smaller chance of recovery then being deposited in a landfill for a decade or more. Either is likely to wreck the electronics, but the landfill is likely to corrode the platters. (Not sure if the bearings are likely to survive a flood, but it seems plausible.)

    • I mean, if his house had been washed away - like in the recent floods - he'd be in the same situation, except with a smaller chance of actually recovering the data.

      Who says the HD is even in that site - maybe someone stole his garbage before the city even picked it up.

    • It was a stupid oversight, but it happened within a much lower-stakes situation. In 2013, it was worth maybe $50k, which is still real money (of course you want backups), but not millions.

  • Wrong request (Score:4, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @02:57PM (#64869727)

    "A proprietary prototype storage device based on a PFAS organo-cadmium mercuric technology was accidentally disposed of in your dumpsite. I fear that the enclosure may be corroding and begin to leak its contents soon. As I am the only person in possession of the gear necessarily to render the device safe, I would be more than happy to locate, remove and neutralize it. Failing that, I can report this to the EPA and have a forty mile radius around the dump site declared uninhabitable and cleared of all the population."

    "Oh yeah. It's full of CO2 as well. Panic!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suutar ( 1860506 )

      Okay, and now you can't back out after they tell you how much it's going to cost you to do the excavation. Welcome to bankruptcy, whether you find the drive or not.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        how much it's going to cost you to do the excavation

        That's up to me. After all, it's very a specialized and sensitive type of hazardous waste. Following your regulations could result in a toxic release the likes of which you can't even imagine.

        Now step aside while me and "Bedrock Bob's Backhoe Service" get to work.

  • Has been digging in the trash for the past 10 years and has finally imaged the outline of what is possibly a 3.5" hard disk buried 25 feet below the surface by using satellite deep penetration radar imagery provided by NASA in the hope if solving at least part of US national debt of almost $35TN and lining the council's pocket when they recover the "7"000 bitcoin.

  • The council have their own guys working overtime trying to find it while they continue to hold off the owner.

  • Meanwhile a councilman won an hitherto-uknown lottery and is $870M richer.

    In unrelated news, the county notes its landfill appears to have ben "moved". Some call it a Simpson's gag. Others say it's a Family Guy gag. Either way, SOMEHOW SOMEWHERE SOMETIME SOMEONE moved the whole landfill SOMEWHERE and it's no longer the town's problem.

    "I don't know how that happened" said newly rich former councilmember "Rick". (new name new moustache, new hair, new 20 year old wife.)
    He added "It's been a heck of a good

  • Madness lies.

  • Why should the city council be the people to fund this? He has a better chance by going to some VC or investor group willing to fund this fishing expedition and make an offer to the city. If he's got a believable story I'm sure there might be people willing to fund it.

    • They're not. The article states he has come up with the money to perform the dig so there wouldn't be any taxpayer money involved.

      It's everything else that myself and others alluded to further up which is the issue.

  • Hear me out: the community pay a small tax to give this bozo $1million and he enjoys the rest of his life, without digging up a million tonnes of crap. I'm pretty sick and tired of all the wasted energy and resources going into Bitcoin as it is, without morons suddenly wanting to expend even more recovering lost hardware!

    • Hear me out: the community pay a small tax to give this bozo $1million and he enjoys the rest of his life, without digging up a million tonnes of crap. I'm pretty sick and tired of all the wasted energy and resources going into Bitcoin as it is, without morons suddenly wanting to expend even more recovering lost hardware!

      So, your solution is to hand this bumbling fool money, thus advertising to the rest of the city that, if you just come up with a dumb enough scenario, the city council will hand you cash. I'm not sure that's much better than smashing environmental concerns for a drive. The correct solution is, "No. GTFO, idiot."

  • Just get a ground-penetrating radar set and comb the thing end-to-end looking for any rectangular metal objects. Use a core-pipe driller to dig down to it and retrieve it.

    (Everything is easy when you don't consider the details!)

    However, unless it's in a waterproof container I'd guess it's already ruined and unrecoverable.

  • I'd just wait for the guy to die first, and then dig it out for 100% of the profits.

  • Why (Score:2)

    by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

    would you not put something that is more valuable than your house into a safe deposit box?!!

    Or at least a SAFE?!!

    • not only that trying to find one drive in a landfill full of everything including other drives. he will never find it.
  • Relevant YT Video "The Hidden Engineering of Landfills" by Practical Engineering:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx_dZawN44

    "Of course, we have a lot of room for improvement in how we think about and manage solid waste in this world. Landfills seem like an environmental blight, but really, properly designed ones play a huge role in making sure waste products don’t end up in our soil or air or water."
  • this is litterly neddle in a haystack chances of even finding the drive.

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