Court Dismisses Prisoner's $354 Million Bitcoin Claim

ChainCatcher news, according to Decrypt, the U.S. federal appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Florida man Michael Prime, who attempted to recover more than $354 million worth of bitcoin.

Prime claimed that these bitcoins were stored on a hard drive that was destroyed by authorities in 2019 when he was arrested for forgery and identity theft. The court ruled that Prime waited too long to file his claim, and that he had repeatedly told investigators, probation officers, and judges early on that he held little to no cryptocurrency, which contradicted his later claim of owning "nearly 3,443 bitcoins." Federal agents ended their search for the bitcoin based on his earlier statements and subsequently destroyed the devices, including the orange hard drive in question. Prime was sentenced to more than five years in prison in 2020.