A US MAN claims to have converted $500,000 into gold and thrown it in a dumpster to spite his divorcing wife.

Earl Ray Jones says he withdrew the family life savings to stop his wife getting any in their settlement, then tossed the money pile into the rubbish at a Colorado hotel.

He was forced to convert it into gold because bank tellers wouldn’t let him withdraw the savings in cash, the Colorado Gazette reports a court deposition as saying.

“If that would have been an option, I would have been walking around giving people $100 bills,” he told a court.

There appear to have been no witnesses and little documentation to support Jones’ dumpster story. However, bank records do show that the money was converted into gold.

Rubbish from the hotel’s bins is delivered to a nearby landfill which accepts 27,000 tonnes of waste every month. Jones says he threw the gold away in May.

Jones is currently being held on an unrelated charge, according to 7News.

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