MAN WHO ACCIDENTALLY THREW AWAY BITCOIN DRIVE PREVENTED FROM RETRIEVING IT FILES HUGE LAWSUIT

We've all been there, sort of: days later, walking down the road with our stomachs dropping because we thought we might have left some cash in that old pair of jeans or handbag. This happened to one man but on a massive scale. His partner unintentionally threw away a hard drive that contained 8,000 Bitcoin, which is now worth an incredible sum of money.

In 2013, Newport, Wales resident James Howells was organising his home office when he left a black bag filled with different items in his hallway. His partner took the bag to the dump with him, thinking it was trash, not realising it held Howell's hard drive, which housed all of his Bitcoin. The 39-year-old computer specialist called Newport City Council immediately and requested permission to look for the bag containing the hard drive and retrieve it; unfortunately, the council declined.

The dispute has lasted for ten years, during which time Howells is said to have sought assistance from NASA data recovery engineers, eminent attorneys, and the council's former head of waste services, who actually assisted in "burying" the hard drive when he was employed by the organisation.

In addition, he has filed a $648 million (£495,314,800) writ to recover the hard drive, which is currently valued at $514.37 million. According to Howells, excavating the area of the landfill where he has identified the hard drive's location—Cell 2 - Area 2—would cost $13 million.

He claims the site has violated environmental regulations for four years and accuses the council of not being "a fit and competent landfill operator." He then offers to help "modernise" the site if the council permits him to dig up the drive as well. "I could work nine to five for the rest of my life and think about it every day," he thought to himself. I could better use my time attempting to retrieve this small piece of metal."

Howells decided that even though the project was taking up all of his "current efforts and resources, including money," and that he was "struggling along," he was "going to keep going" until the court told him "N-O spells no."

"The legal action is taken care of. We're prepared to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, the appeals court, he declared. "I anticipate going the whole distance with a case this big. Although I really didn't want to go to court, this is my last opportunity."

Since then, the council has responded. An 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," a Newport Council spokesman reaffirmed, telling Howells this "multiple times."

The council, they continued, "follows a strict monitoring and reporting regime for all environmental parameters" and "frequently" reports to the regulator. The council is the only body authorised to conduct operations on the site.

They went on, "Like other waste disposal authorities, there are occasionally exceedances of some of the levels, and these are noted in Natural Resources Wales' compliance reports." "We feel the mention of Mr. Howells' claim is nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention from a fundamentally false claim, which we are vehemently opposing. Our monitoring and reporting regime is unrelated to his claim."

"Yet again, addressing Mr Howells’ unfounded allegations is costing the council and Newport taxpayers time and money that could be better spent on providing services," the spokesperson decided.