Time to break out the backhoe, start digging...
Back in 2013, James Howells made headlines when the story of his missing hard drive came to light. Howells was an early Bitcoiner who mined 7,500 Bitcoins back in 2009 with his laptop – when the cryptocurrency was still easily mineable, and barely worth anything.
According to The Guardian, he mined them on a Dell laptop for over a week and stopped mining because his girlfriend complained the laptop was too noisy and hot. In 2010, he accidentally spilled lemonade on his Dell laptop, so he dismantled it for parts. The hard drive in which the Bitcoins were in were kept in went to a drawer, in which it stayed for three years, until one day he had a clearout.
When clearing out his old IT equipment, he didn’t remember the hard drive had money in it, so he just threw it away. At the time, he said “you know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself ‘that’s a bad idea’? I really did have that.” When he realized what he had done, he searched for a backup, an accidental copy, something that could give him access to the money, but didn’t find anything.
Source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/missing-hard-drive-with-7500-bitcoin-now-worth-72-million/