A retired FBI agent has revived interest in an alleged case of stolen Civil War gold that was hidden in Pennsylvania for more than 160 years.
“This is a conspiracy theory that keeps me awake at night,” admitted retired Special Agent Stewart Fillmore, now a “true crime” author and podcaster.
A treasure hunter claimed he found buried gold in 2018 and tipped the FBI to help recover the treasure, but after a three-day investigation, “nothing was found.”
The treasure, worth $41 million in today’s dollars, was destined for the Philadelphia Mint in 1863, where it would help defray the Union’s “enormous expense of conducting the war,” according to official U.S. Army war documents .
But the shipment disappeared and was believed to have been stolen by a Confederate secret society, the Knights of the Golden Circle, who buried the gold in a rural part of Elk County.
The treasure hunter, Dennis Parada, worked with the FBI six years ago, with the agency identifying “some large mass in the underground location,” Fillmore said.
“The FBI also used some pretty high-tech equipment to determine that gold was present,” he added.
Fillmore’s assessment of the mystery is correct: allegations that FBI officials absconded with the treasure they may have discovered.
Legend has it that a Union Army wagon train carried two tons of gold on a 400-mile journey between Wheeling, West Virginia, and Gettysburg. The gold was sent by President Abraham Lincoln to pay Union soldiers (photo, during the Battle of Gettysburg), but first had to stop at the United States Mint in Philadelphia
FBI Agent Jacob Archer said he believed there is a significant amount of gold hidden in the underground cavern at Dent’s Run, containing “one or more tons” belonging to the U.S. government.
“I don’t understand why the site survey shows the presence of gold, a large mass underground, and then finds nothing at all,” Fillmore told his followers in a brief summary of the mystery TikTok.
Fillmore spent nearly three decades at the agency before investigating similarly intriguing cases from history for his series Texas Crime Travelerswith one of the latest episodes focusing on Civil War gold.
The story began in 2018, when Parada used ground-penetrating radar to look beneath the surface of part of the forest and found evidence of a large mass of what he thought was the buried gold.
The treasure hunter sought help from the FBI because of the potential gold located on public land.
The agency ordered scientific tests, which revealed an object with a mass of up to nine tons and a density consistent with gold.
A few days later, the FBI showed up with more than fifty agents and construction equipment to dig more than 10 feet into the ground. But the dig was a failure, it was claimed.
And when the FBI turned over a trove of records from the dig, they were incomplete, the treasure hunter claimed.
However, a local city official said she saw lights and heard officers working late at night, while others reported seeing armored vehicles in the city, fueling the conspiracy theory for years that the FBI stole the gold.
And Kem Parada, Dennis’ son, reported that he was also told to “stay in his car” for the duration of the dig, preventing him from seeing what the FBI was planning.
The FBI based its request for a seizure warrant in part on the work of Dennis (right) and Kem (left) Parada: a father-son pair of treasure hunters who had made hundreds of trips to the area
Fellow treasure hunter Kem Parada has reported that he was told to ‘stay in his car’ for the duration of the dig (pictured above), preventing him from seeing what the FBI was planning
Anne Weismann, the attorney for the treasure hunters, told DailyMail.com in 2023 that it would be unusual for a federal investigation not to be meticulously recorded.
“From a forensic perspective, you would think they would use the time and date stamp,” she said. “For me that’s a big mistake.”
Weismann also believes the FBI is withholding communications it had with the company whose scientific tests suggested the presence of gold at the site and prompted the company to file an affidavit seeking a warrant to seize property belonging to the US Treasury Department.
‘They receive a Writ of Entry that gives them access to the ground. They’re looking for this for three days, using an excavator and all kinds of techniques, to locate this stuff,” Fillmore says in the video.
Grainy ‘black and white’ images released by the FBI of the dig site in 2022 – as a result of a row between the courts and local treasure hunters – have only fueled further speculation about what may or may not have been found during the search during this long time. lost Union treasure of stolen Civil War gold
Scientific testing at the site commissioned by the FBI indicated an underground object with a mass of up to nine tons and a density consistent with gold. The FBI used the consultant’s work to obtain a warrant to seize the gold – if it could be found at all
One photo released by the FBI shows a hole they buried while searching for the treasure
‘Very well documented, I must say. Very thoroughly documented,” he continued, “and they found nothing.”
This month, Parada told Finders Keepers fans and supporters that “our FBI case is still on hold” and he is “pending word from the federal judge in DC.”
“Then we will present this matter to the Senate,” Parada announced.
Warren Getler, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who helped Parada identify the site, told the story the Journal he too had “come to the inevitable conclusion that the FBI had taken the treasure under the cover of darkness.”
The treasure hunter has insisted the episode smacks of a ‘major cover-up’.
Weismann said the FBI only provided the surveyor’s location analysis and declined to acknowledge any subsequent contact.
“They want us to believe that after they found nothing, there was never any follow-up action with that company,” Weismann said.
Getler said the treasure hunters may never be able to prove that the FBI made off with a pot of gold.
But he added: “What we can prove is that the FBI conducted a nighttime dig, despite their denial.”