The Man Who Found $8 Million in a Dumpster
Sometimes treasure really is trash.
In 2021, a janitor in New York City stumbled upon a pile of discarded office equipment in an alley behind a bankrupt tech startup.
He noticed a small metal box labeled “DATA BACKUPS.”
Inside: old hard drives.
One of them contained thousands of Bitcoin, forgotten since 2013.
The drives were later valued at over $8 million.
The man turned them in — but the company had dissolved, and no legal owner could be verified.
Under state law, finders keepers.
He retired the same week.
Neighbors say he now spends his mornings feeding pigeons and whispering,
“Check the trash.”
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