Guy Who Dumped $500 Million Bitcoin Hard Drive Sues Local Government To Search Dump

For the past decade, a man in Wales has been asking his town government for permission to inspect the contents of a landfill. 39-year-old Newport resident James Howells has been asking to do this since, in 2013, he accidentally threw a hard drive containing 7,500 Bitcoin in the trash. Thanks to the rise in the value of cryptocurrency over the past decade, those assets would be worth more than half a billion dollars today.

Unfortunately for Howells, the Newport City Council has repeatedly turned down his request. Lawmakers have argued that going deeper into the landfill would violate regulations and could seriously damage the environment.

Now, in an attempt to force the local government to do his bidding, Howell is suing the council, seeking £495,314,800 in damages, reports Wales Online. The amount that Howells is asking for is about the same as what he would have made if he had stuck with the crypto-bearing drive. Howells told the media that he does not actually want the money from the council and is just trying to force it to allow his drilling to continue.

This is only the latest step in an increasingly desperate (and potentially expensive) drive recovery effort. The Register writes that, a decade ago, Howells “left his job in IT and put together a team of investors,” the likes of which would be able to diversify a large portion of assets, if the drive is found. On the other hand, Howells plans to keep about 30 percent of its value.

Gizmodo has contacted Newport City Council for comment. We will update this story when we receive a response.

Howells said he will share a percentage of the profits from the hard drive with the local community, if he can find it. In fact, Howell made ludicrous claims about the opportunity Newport legislators are missing out on by denying his request to overturn the condemnation. “If they had spoken to me in 2013, this place would have looked like Las Vegas now,” Howell apparently told Wales Online. “Newport will look like Dubai. That’s the kind of opportunity they missed.” It’s unclear whether some Newport residents—whose city is already considered a bustling metropolitan community—really want the surrounding area to resemble Las Vegas.

In a statement given to The Register, the council said it had “told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that drilling is not possible under our environmental permit and that such work would have a very negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.” It added: “The council is the only organization authorized to carry out works on the site.”

It is worth considering how much money Howells sunk into this complex project. After all, the drive in question is either A) lost forever and/or B) completely corrupted and unusable. If so, Howell spent years of his life and a lot of change doing nothing. At the same time, it was necessary for Howells to somehow get his mitts on his beloved drive, and it was his crypto assets somehow in a recoverable format, he would never work again – so you can understand his enthusiasm for this whole thing.