Well... maybe they're not THAT safe (if we get clues
)... So at around 1509 hrs UTC on 28th September (around 0409 hrs on the 29th local)... my script spat out another possible hit... I was working a night shift and so I didn't actually get around to checking it until around 8 hours later.
Amongst the 3 new possible hits that had been generated, one started with "1qk...."... could this be it?? I quickly checked on blockchain.info... "Final Balance: 0.5001 BTC"... WOOOOHOOOO!!!!!!!
So I quickly imported the private key into my wallet and transferred my newfound loot into my own personal address. 
The private key turned out to be: 5JKPapJwgyEij3sxYRAEnixyiFgxqkVhgZXv9bWWknBexegx6tM
I sent a note to the puzzle creator to let them know... and I have created a PasteBin with my source code in case anyone wants to see my pretty ugly and untidy python code
Congratulations
And I really appreciate uploading that script. I'm learning python and I expect that script will help me to learn even better 