He suspects the agency conducted a clandestine, overnight dig between the first and second days of the court-authorized excavation, found the gold, and spirited it away. Parada was mostly kept away from the dig site while the FBI did its work. Parada obtained the video and other FBI records through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, hoping they would help answer lingering questions about what took place at Dents Run five years ago. This 2018 photo released by Federal Bureau of Investigation shows the FBI's dig for Civil War-era gold at a remote site in Dents Run, Pa., after sophisticated testing suggested tons of gold might be buried there. Only a dig would help law enforcement "get to the bottom of this story once and for all," the agent said. particularly gold, maybe silver," the agent said on the video, his face blurred by the FBI to protect his privacy.Ĭalling it a "155-year-old cold case," he said the FBI had corroborated Parada's information about the location of the reputed gold through "scientific testing." He stressed the test results did not prove the presence of gold. property, which includes a significant sum of base metal which is valuable. "We've identified through our investigation a site that we believe has U.S. An FBI videographer was on hand to document it, at one point interviewing a Philadelphia-based agent on the FBI's art-crime team who explained why the FBI was in the woods of one of Pennsylvania's most sparsely populated counties. The FBI brought in a geophysical consulting firm whose sensitive equipment detected a 7- to 9-ton mass suggestive of gold.Īrmed with a warrant, a team of FBI agents came in March 2018 to dig up the hillside. He and his son spent years looking for the fabled gold of Dents Run, eventually guiding the FBI to a remote woodland site 135 miles northeast of Pittsburgh where they say their instruments identified a large quantity of metal. There is little evidence in the historical record to suggest that an Army detachment lost a gold shipment in the Pennsylvania wilderness - possibly the result of an ambush by Confederate sympathizers - but the legend has inspired generations of treasure hunters, Parada among them. The statement said the FBI did not find any, adding the agency "continues to unequivocally reject any claims or speculation to the contrary." Last year, the FBI released a statement publicly acknowledging for the first time that it had been looking for gold in Dents Run. 6, 2023.Īn FBI spokesperson declined to answer questions about the agency's gold dig records or respond to the coverup allegations, citing the ongoing litigation. Treasure hunter Dennis Parada, owner of Finders Keepers, talks about the FBI's 2018 dig for Civil War-era gold in an interview at his office in Clearfield, Pa., Jan. Solving the mystery is not his only goal - he had hoped to earn a finder's fee from the potential recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold. "The truth will come out," said Parada, co-founder of the treasure-hunting outfit Finders Keepers.
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