Indonesia’s ‘millionaire’ meteorite man ducks limelight after going viral
- Josua Hutagalung has gone into hiding after multiple global media outlets reported the hunk of space rock he found was worth US$1.7 million
- But that sum was based on an inaccurate estimate that ‘no collector will pay’, according to a spokeswoman hired to speak on his behalf
Josua Hutagalung received some 214 million rupiah (about US$15,090) for the meteorite that crashed into his house on August 1 – an incident whose aftermath he documented in a viral video uploaded to his Facebook account.
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It was the interest generated by this video that spurred Jared Collins, an American citizen living in Bali, to travel to Hutagalung’s home in Sutahan Barat Village, North Sumatra’s Central Tapanuli Regency, on August 7 and check the stone’s authenticity at a third party’s behest.
Hutagalung told the media afterwards that he considered the sum he had received from Collins to be a large fortune and that he had distributed some of the money to his family, as well as paying for a new church to be built in his village.
Yet a number of outlets also reported that the meteorite’s supposed true worth was closer to 2.6 billion rupiah (US$1.7 million), a sum that Chairani – a spokeswoman for the public relations agency that Hutagalung has now hired to speak on his behalf – said was only an estimate deduced “after calculating the price of one gram of meteorite”.
“Currently there are no meteorites of such value, and of course no collector will pay that price,” she said.
While it is still unclear what price was ultimately paid for the meteorite, it is now listed on the website of the Meteoritical Society, a US-based non-profit research organisation, as “Kolang” after the name of the district in which it fell.
The “main mass” of the stone, the listing says, is “now owned by Jay Piatek” – presumably the same Jaguar-driving doctor and avid meteorite collector who appeared in a 2014 feature about his prized samples of Martian meteorite in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine Science under the headline “A castaway from ancient Mars”.
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Piatek “made his fortune ministering to thousands of patients who struggle with eating compulsions” at his clinic in the US state Indianapolis, according to the article, which noted he had 13 dogs at the time.
As for Hutagalung? He “can no longer accept interviews because of the increased press scrutiny over the past few days,” said his spokeswoman Chairani, of the Jakarta-based public relations firm Magnifique. “He is worried that the story will be misrepresented.”
