Benjamin Pell - Biography

Benjamin Pell (also known as "Benji the Binman") is a British man who was noted for raking through the dustbins of law firms representing prominent people in search of incriminating or compromising documents that he could sell to the media.

Once a trainee lawyer, he failed law exams at University College London in 1986 which he was expected to pass. Pell pretended to be following a legal career for eight months until his family discovered the truth.

Pell (or documents he has found) have been involved in several court cases, including ones involving Elton John, All Saints and the 'cash for questions' libel case between Mohamed Al-Fayed and Neil Hamilton. He has also been prosecuted himself and was only fined £20, due to his claim that he lived off a weekly £10 payment from his father despite the estimated £100,000 a year he was earning from selling documents to newspapers.

He was mentioned regularly in Private Eye, which nicknamed him 'Benjy the Bin-man'. He was also the subject of a Channel 4 television documentary Scandal in the Bins (2000) by Victor Lewis-Smith. In 2003, he won damages of £125,000 in an out-of-court settlement from the Sunday Express which had falsely accused him of providing the IRA with information. and slander against Mark Watts (journalist) the journalist who verbally accused him of the same act. Watts wrote a book about Pell titled The Fleet Street Sewer Rat, published in 2005.

Benjamin Pell has reportedly retired from his unusual activities. He can often be found in the Royal Courts of Justice taking notes on libel trials. He has a particular interest in libel cases and is well known to the Queen's Bench jurists.

See also

• Dumpster diving
• Information diving

• Tim Adams "Benjamin Pell versus the Rest of the World", Granta, 87:21 (2004)

External links

• Review of Scandal in the Bins