I'm a programmer; I got into bitcoin in early 2011; and was smart enough to keep a sizeable stash (several hundred btc). When bitcoin started really going through the roof I spent a bunch of time 'protecting' that wallet with a long passphrase; and though I opened it several times, I waited like 4 months to get into it and when I tried, I couldn't get in. I tried and tried and tried.
I eventually wrote a naive cracker that tried about 5 million attempts in little bursts over the next couple months, never successful. I was getting ready to give up when I was referred to dave. I was hopeful but far from optimistic.
Within 72 hours of contacting dave; he had cracked a 50+ character password, with everything you are supposed to have: symbols, numbers, upper and lower case, words and random gibberish. He had the opportunity to steal, if he chose 57 btc from me worth at the time of writing something like ~34k usd. He didn't!
I obviously gave him the info needed; he wasn't acting blind.
Dave, you fucking rock.
I am very happy to have been able to help you!
Thanks for the nice write-up. I've mentioned you to Stephanie Murphy (from the show Lets Talk Bitcoin), who may be doing a segment about walletrecoveryservices.com shortly. Perhaps you will get a mention too?
Regarding your ruby scripts - no, I didn't use them, except for some reference info.
Cheers
Dave