You're not getting the data back in any useful manner. Data on USB flash drives is not stored in the manner magnetic media is. Due to wear levelling in the controller that's possibly failed you won't know which blocks are physically located where.
This is a good time to school your friend in 3,2,1 backups. Three copies of every file on two different media types (optical, magnetic) where one copy is in a geographically different place (read: tornado, flood, theft, etc.).
Some data recovery businesses do work at the hardware level but I can assure you, you can't afford it. $10,000+ for some repairs. You have to really need the data back.