A pair of treasure hunters who claim they found a cache of Civil War-era gold are suing for the FBI’s excavation records.
Finders Keepers, a treasure locate and recovery service in Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice on Tuesday in hopes of confirming the FBI’s search for the gold in 2018.
“With its request, Plaintiff seeks to confirm the FBI’s recovery of Civil War-era gold buried in the mountains of Pennsylvania, based in significant part on scientific evidence of the gold’s existence that Plaintiff provided the FBI,” the lawsuit claims.
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Finders Keepers’s owners, Dennis and Kem Parada, had spent years looking for what was reported to be an 1863 shipment of Union gold that was lost on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. Both the loot and the troops escorting it went missing, according to local legend.
Previous accounts of the gold shipment estimate that the treasure contained 26 to 52 bars of gold, each weighing 50 pounds and valued at $50 million.
The duo had found a large mass of metal in a particular area and contacted the FBI for assistance. The law enforcement agency sent a contractor out to the site with more precise tools to investigate the claims.
“I have probable cause to believe that a significant cache of gold is secreted in the underground cave” in Dent’s Run, holding “one or more tons” belonging to the U.S. government, wrote Jacob Archer of the FBI’s art crime team in an unsealed affidavit discovered in June 2021.
The Paradas accompanied the FBI to the site in 2018 but were told to remain within the vehicle. The FBI later claimed that the dig came up empty.
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The Paradas and their lawyers have attempted to unseal the relevant documents in hopes of receiving a portion of the treasure.
The Paradas hope that the lawsuit will force the DOJ to process a 2018 Freedom of Information Act request for the relevant documents and unseal all relevant records.
