Well, this is one of the major risks associated with using bitcoin. With a simple mistake, one can lose all in a twinkle of an eye. One of the most effective precautive measures in keep your bitcoin safe is to keep your wallet keys as safe as possible. One method I employed is to make copies of each of my wallet keys and keep them safe. That way, I can always recover it even if one got lost or missing.
I sincerely do hope he is able to recover the coins because that's a whole lot of money to lose .
But the issue mentioned with how do you know that they don't just get the private key and then tell you that they couldn't resolve your problem?
That is indeed a problem which would keep me concerned, but then you have no chance. This guy in Britain who lost his hard drive, or Scotland, I don't remember. Anyway, he threw it away and then asked the junkyard provider whether he could search it because it was like 70 million or so. The junkyard denied and the guy didn't get the chance to search for it. How do we know the junkyard provider didn't go for it himself?