Nobody Claimed These 39,069 Bitcoin Wallets For Six Years — Now A Court Will Decide Who Owns Them
A New York man identified in court documents only as Noah Doe has filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York seeking legal ownership of 39,069 abandoned Bitcoin wallets — assets he discovered using a self-developed algorithm, reported to the NYPD in compliance with lost and found property law, and spent over a year attempting to return to their rightful owners before filing suit. Related Reading: American Mega Bank Is Dumping Its Ethereum Holdings, Here’s What It’s Buying The First Amended Complaint, filed May 1, 2026, under index number 153119/2026 and filed through Brooklyn-based law firm Lewis & Lin LLC, lays out one of the most unusual property cases in crypto’s short legal history. Noah Doe is not a hacker. He is not a thief. Under New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, he is arguing he is a finder — and that title to the abandoned wallets vested in him by operation of law after all reasonable efforts to locate their owners failed. How He Found The Bitcoin