Treasure hunters demand answers from the FBI about the search for gold from the Civil War US News

Treasure hunters who believe they have found there a huge vault of legendary gold from the US Civil War Pennsylvania now looking for something as elusive as the buried booty itself: state records of FBI excavations.

Finders Keepers, the lost treasure retrieval service, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Justice Department for failing to provide documents on the FBI’s legendary gold search, which took place nearly four years ago in a remote forest in the northwest. Pennsylvania.

“By his request, Plaintiff seeks to confirm the FBI’s acquisition of Civil War gold buried in the Pennsylvania Mountains, based in large part on scientific evidence for the existence of gold that the plaintiff provided to the FBI,” lawsuit said.

Since then, the FBI has been dragging out a request for freedom of information about freedom of information about treasure hunters, their lawyer said Wednesday.

“There’s a pattern of FBI behavior that’s very troubling,” said Anne Weissman, who represents Finders Keepers. She questioned whether the agency was operating “in good faith.”

A message was sent to the Department of Justice asking it to comment on the lawsuit, in which the judge asked to order the FBI to hand over the records immediately.

Owners of Finders Keepers, a duo of father and son Dennis and Kem Parade, spent years searching, according to legend, for the 1863 Union gold cargo that was lost or stolen en route to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. which was to be used to pay the salaries of federal troops.

The soldiers carrying the gold disappeared along with the loot, giving rise to several generations of speculation about what happened to him, although historians question this claim, pointing to the lack of official records of transportation.

The duo focused on the place where their instruments are said to have discovered a large metal mass.

After meeting with treasure hunters in early 2018, the FBI hired a contractor with more sophisticated tools. The contractor discovered an underground mass weighing up to nine tons and a density of gold, according to FBI testimony disclosed last year.

“I have plausible reason to believe that the underground cave secretes a significant supply of gold,” in Dent’s Run with “one or more tones” owned by the U.S. government, Jacob Archer of the FBI’s crime group in Philadelphia said.

Accounts differ regarding the amount of gold in supply. Some reports say it was 26 gold bars, others – 52. Each would weigh 23 kg, which means that today it costs up to $ 50 million.

March 2018 Tips accompanied The FBI is at the site in Dents Ran, about 135 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, but is said to have been restricted in its vehicle during FBI excavations.

The FBI has long insisted that the excavations in March 2018 were empty, but the agency has constantly thwarted Paradise’s efforts to obtain information.

Finders Keepers has appealed to the Department of Justice for expedited processing, which can be provided in cases where there is widespread media interest related to government integrity issues. However, the Department of Justice rejected the request – and, according to the lawsuit, as of last month has not yet sent a request for processing to employees for processing.

“From the beginning, it seems that the FBI is doing everything possible to avoid answering the question of whether they really found gold,” Weissman said.