A Hard Drive Broke My Back I Recovered

Andy Butler has rebuilt his data recovery operations after being left as a "dead man walking" by Fields Associates process server. Within 1 minute of their serving of a perjured high court injunction based on a fake affidavit sworn by their head of operations for a payment of £2500 Andy was believed to be unable to survive the impacts the "witness" saw and heard his head and back take.

R3 Data Recovery continues to help the victims of the data recovery scams and has rebuilt Security House and continued to develop one of the very best data recovery labs and teams ever brought together in Europe.

If you have lost access to your data call 0800 999 3282 or Email andy@r3datarecovery.com

The Data Recovery Scam

When you get calls from potential clients and your price is too high for them, they will no doubt shop around, but what if they go away and find a cheap price for data recovery that turns out to be a scam, how would you know, a sophisticated scam by its very design is hard to spot. There are companies which market specifically for Fields Data Recovery Victims – they are often ex employees or resellers and partners of the Fields Group Operations:

• Data Recovery Specialists
• Fields Associates
• Fields Data Recovery
• Rapid Data
• Data Phoenix
• Rapid Track Data
• Endeavour Law
• Quickie Divorce
• Action Direct UK
• UK Digital Solutions
• Injunctions Direct

The Fields data recovery scam was part of a much wider scam involving payment protection insurance claims, personal injury claims, quickie divorces, employment tribunals and more, you can see why they have their own legal department, and make millions from unsuspecting "punters" even if after Action Direct was sanctioned by the ministry of justice it does not stop.

A corporate structure ISO 9001 accreditation, the appearance of respectability can be achieved by any website developer, and is easily achieved if you can print money faster than the Bank of England or Wales using grants and subsidies.

So what would you say if those same clients who turned down your price come back after paying out money for a Fields Associates fake data recovery report? What can you say... hard luck... sorry to hear that... oh dear what a shame never mind.

Once you hear this several times and its from the same competitor, and the reports say no recovery possible, fake reports, incompatible parts.. I don’t want to go into it all here but basically it’s the fields / rapid data recovery scam. Drives that should have been recovered are put at risk by a document spooling papermill, and so many lives have been affected (570 complaints to Bridgend Trading Standards is just the tip of the Iceberg, most do not know how they were scammed).

How a Fake Data Recovery Report on a Broken Hard Drive Can Result in a Damaged Spine and a Damaged Business

After many years of hearing of others personal data disasters losing data and the effects it can have on their businesses and personal lives, I can possibly say I have heard it all, and I personally have seen my share of it helping thousands of businesses and home users.

Be it a server room under 4 foot of water in a flood, drives damaged in earthquakes and tsunami, to thousands of digital photos lost during a 3 month tour of the Amazon rain forest. There are many reasons access to data is lost.

Storage devices are not designed to fail, they just do and for many reasons.

Dog and cat chewed memory cards, dropped laptops, lightening strikes to electrical systems, powersurges and power outages, head crashes and seized hard drive motors, fried printed circuit boards to complete servers fire damaged in a data centre.

Common catastrophes are spillages of wine, coffee or water on laptops, external hard drives dropped from desks, to memory sticks bent at the USB connector.

Sometimes its more straight forward, accidently and even deliberately deleted files or a botched operating system re-installation are commonplace. More unusual was the microwaved memory stick – and yes we recovered it!

Everyone’s story is unique, their reason for needing the data is still key to any data loss situation, and the urgency often dictates the cost, but most people are looking for the cheapest price, not realising that sometimes a cheap quote will not get them their data back just a 10 page report, and some make more money selling nothing more than paper.

We Can All Appreciate How Losing Data Can Break the Bank but How Did a Hard Drive Result in a Broken Back?

Jamie, Daryl, Matthew, Richard and Glyn the men behind the Field Group Quickie Divorces, Payment Protection Insurance and Yes Data Recovery Experts for over 12 years. Dr Jamie Hamilton Wallis (Westminster Conservative MP for Bridgend Wales) established Fields Data Recovery whilst at school but it is how he did it that is the Fields Data Recovery Scam.

Fields staff dominate the forums and blogs and for 10 years have gradually put their smaller rivals out of business using Welsh Assembly grants and skimming off their clients credit cards to boost their profits. Making them believe they own the law and can get away with anything.

The Victims of Fields

It was already costing me substantially to compete with a company that is able to dominate Pay Per Click by bidding up the price and then selling paper using government grant assistance.

Despite offerring to help Fields, they continued to try and malign my business, so I decide if I am to be put out of business by them I will find out how they were doing it.

Bribing my staff, putting up fake posts in my name, click fraud and then a perjured affidavit claiming to get a high court injunction are just a few of the underhanded ways they operate.

When victims of Fields contact a DR company it has to be said that it could be that the recovery was not possible, but the fake reports and finger prints on platters, incompatable parts are too commonplace and Fields seem to do it routinely even when a drive should be recoverable with just minor electronic repairs.

At first I just became angry that my technicians / business resources and time is being wasted, but after a year hearing from various victims, and seeing others going bust I decide to help those I could and in doing so attracted the wrath of the Fields Group Directors who paid their own operations manager £2500 to lie in an affidavit and secure a high court injunction based on lies.

As a result I was being sued for damages, served court documents and having threats of being put out of business but I never thought I would end up physically damaged myself. nor at the hands of an ex policeman who now ducks and dives as an uninsured private investigator and cranial massage specialist.

I once dropped my laptop on to my toe and although the laptop was fine, the toe broke, this was the the first and only other time I have ever broken a bone in my body and it was a shock, but on that fateful day at around 8:55 am on October 8th 2010 my life was again changed through an adverse act.

The Process Server

I was expecting someone calling that morning, even emailed to say I would be available between 8am to 9am or after 5pm having received an email from Fields in house solicitor.

Fields head of forensics Dr Daryl Hamilton Wallis has been aware of the scams his companies carry out, but instead of sorting them out he allowed his young staff to defraud, threaten and abuse those they were supposedly providing services to.

Knowing of the many deceptive ways Fields staff operate and the fact that only days before they had cancelled a mediation meeting I try to not allow their bullying tactics to intimidate me.

So when someone calls just as you are about to leave your home for the lab you want to be sure it is the person you have waited for surely?

The caller was a "process server" he delivers documents, as it was, I already had a copy of the document served by email, but never mind, ever one to oblige I wish to receive the document in the traditional manner.

So when someone unidentified asked my name, I immediately asked "who are you where are you from".

This is where it gets silly, who is in the wrong? Me for asking who this person is and what is his business, or for not answering a stranger at my door?

What would you say? "depends who is asking" or "who wants to know".

I was just matter of fact, I am wanting to be sure the grumpy man presenting himself at my house is the person I am expecting, I step out my door and stand on the driveway.

He walks towards me, repeating his question without identifying himself.

I am somewhat taken aback and back away, and repeat "who are you where are you from?".

He says my name and throws some documents on the driveway near the doorway and begins to race straight at me, I keep backing off but by now I being walked backwards down the slope and he is steering the direction keeping as close as he can to me, but I keep repeating "who are you where are you from?".

By now I have taken several steps backwards and each time he pushes up to me, he has the chance to step around me but instead elects to keep pushing up to me and forcing me to back off.

I make no contact with him but as I get close to the top of the steepest part of the driveway I have to slow up, I ask

"who are you where are you from?"

no answer..

"what are you doing here?"

to which he answers

"my names Michael and I am trying to get off your f’**g land"

(subsequently it turns out his name is not Michael anyway, he is an ex police officer) and I suddenly find myself being pushed on my chest with such force it lifts me off my feet and I find myself flying backwards through the air.

The slope of the driveway is very steep and I am not just falling through 90 degrees towards the ground I am falling through over 120 degrees.

At this point my schoolboy maths is trying to do the calculation whilst also trying to comprehend that this person has assaulted me.

Newtons Law F=ma does not quite work here, we have an initial input force, mass, gravity, and the angle of the slope creating a further distance to fall before impacting the block paving, equals "I am going to die".

At the time I could not remember what hit the ground first, but I know the first pain I felt was when my head bounced off the driveway, I continue travelling down the slope and it impacts the drive a second time and bounces and I continue sliding down on my back to the bottom.

I am screaming in pain like an injured child, shock, fear, anger. I don’t know but I cannot see who is standing over me because my glasses are no longer on my face. How long was I like this in this prone condition, I guess long enough for "Michael" to walk the 4 metres, pick up my glasses, put them on the wall and realise my wife is coming from the house.

Did he do anything else, I don’t know, but as I my wife reaches me he is walking off to his car.

I get up go over to the car and as he opens the drivers door and gets in I reach the back of the car.

I move to the passenger side and open the door as he is starting the car engine, and say

"you can’t go I am calling the police"

but he just drives off.

I call the police, the paramedics are also on their way and it dawns on me "I am alive" the pain in the head is what I am most concerned about, my skull is grazed, I have other cuts and grazes and my back hurts.

The journey by ambulance to the hospital I am told was quite eventful, I experienced a severe epileptic fit and the paramedics had to stop whilst I was stableised.

At the A&E I am checked for head injuries, the concern is I have an existing brain tumour and an MRI scan is arranged. After the all clear and treatment of the cuts and I am discharged.

I carry on with life, business and the court cases that have caused this situation, the chronic back, neck and headaches are casing me to break under the strain.

In the court hearing nearly 5 months after, I am marked down by the Judge for being an "awkward witness" in reality I am sufferring more epileptic fits than I can cope with and just keep thinking I will be OK soon its just whiplash, despite my distressed state I come out on top and my attackers are mulcted.

I'm R3covering

9 months after the assault I find I cannot talk properly, am still struggling to function and my businesses are suffering.

The pains in my body are debilitating, normal pain killers are ineffective, I seek help from a pain therapist, my back and neck muscles are knotted up and my body does not even feel the acupuncture needles.

After 2 months of acupuncture my speech returining to normal, an X-Ray shows damage in the neck vertibrae and it is suspected several other vertibrae are in rotation, I await the expert opinions on the MRI scan of my spine and hope they can fix the damage.

So – there you have it "a hard drive broke my back" and my business and its employees suffered because of it.

What is interesting about life is when you are down on the ground, unconscious some will kick you, when you are hurt some will take advantage, and when you are too weak to fight some will think you have given in. Luckily in my hour of need, friends and supporters came to my aid.