Treasure hunter says FBI dug up in the middle of the night and made off missing $500 million in Civil War gold after finding a long-lost burial site

A treasure hunter has accused the FBI of a “big cover-up” after it allegedly stole $500 million in buried Civil War gold.

Dennis Parada believes he found a cemetery halfway up a mountain in western Pennsylvania, laden with Civil War treasures, before the FBI dug up the goods in the dark.

The detectorist claims he alerted authorities to the possible capture after the ground suggested the Dents Run site was filled with gold.

The FBI then ordered its own tests that suggested large amounts of the metal might be below the surface.

The agency claims that when it excavated the site in 2018, it was empty.

Scientific tests at the site on behalf of the FBI indicated an underground object with a mass of up to 9 tons and a density similar to that of gold. The FBI used the consultant’s work to get a warrant to seize the gold – if it could be found at all

But Parada insists they ran off with the gold during a nighttime dig, denying him a hefty finder’s fee.

Warren Getler, co-author of “Rebel Gold” and a former Wall Street Journal reporter who helped Parada identify the site, told The Wall Street Journal that he had “come to the inevitable conclusion that the FBI had taken the treasure under cover of darkness.”

Parada said it smacked of a “big cover.”

He and his son Kem, who make up the treasure hunting company Finders Keepers, sued the FBI last year to enforce a Freedom of Information Act request.

They now claim that the FBI failed to turn over certain documents and manipulated photos to cover up a nighttime dig.

Treasure hunters have long searched for lost Rebel treasures, but less attention has been paid to Union gold.

But Parada’s interest was piqued by an article in Treasure magazine in 1974 that reported that a Union caravan carrying gold bars had been ambushed in Elk County, Pennsylvania.

He has said that a psychic led him to a location in Dents Run and has since visited the location over 400 times.

The 70-year-old claims to have found a cave with walls that appear to be man-made, containing a bullet casing, a whiskey bottle and bones dating back to the 19th century.

In 2017, he began collaborating with Getler, who told him he believed Confederate sympathizers and a secret society known as the Knights of the Golden Circle likely stole and hid the gold.

Images released by the FBI of the dig site last year fueled further speculation about what may or may not have been found in the search for the lost Union treasure

A photo released by the FBI shows a hole they buried while searching for the treasure

After using radar technology that suggested the presence of the precious metal, Getler told the FBI that government gold had been buried at the site in 1863.

The agency’s own tests then revealed a large mass with a density similar to gold.

It brought in more than 50 officers and dug down 12 feet, but the dig was a failure, it is claimed.

The Paradas say they spoke to a local resident who said she saw lights and heard the FBI working late at night, while others reported seeing armored vehicles in the city.

Kem recalls being told to “stay in his car” during the dig.

In May last year, the FBI was forced to turn over a trove of documents from the dig to the Paradas.

Not only did the documents show that the agency’s own scientific tests revealed the possible presence of gold, but they also included nearly 1,000 photographs, in grainy black and white, showing some — but by no means all — of what the FBI was up to. doing was at the excavation site. said the treasure hunters.

Many of the FBI photos seem irrelevant, including the hundreds of images of random trees and a forest road leading to the dig site, while others simply don’t add up or raise additional questions, Getler claims.

FBI agents stand around the hole in photos that appear earlier in the series, but they are missing from almost all later images at the dig site.

Getler and Parada say the lead FBI agent told them the hole had filled with water on the morning of the second day, but the low-quality images released by the government show only a small puddle or perhaps a bit of snow.

They said the same agent spent most of the second day at base camp — where Getler and the treasure hunters say they were largely confined to their car — and not at the dig site.

The FBI said it’s standard practice for photographs to “document on-site conditions before, during and after FBI operations.”

The treasure hunters also shared images of the artifacts they found during their excavations at the site, including a bullet casing, a whiskey bottle and bones scattered nearby that date back to the 1800s.

Parada claims it all points to a clandestine overnight dig and a second day dig that was just for show.

“I think we expected a few hundred photos from the nighttime dig, and I think we expected photos of metal coins or bars,” Parada said. “I think there were pictures, but they’re gone.”

The FBI records also show that just weeks before the excavation, an agent on the art crime team at the Bureau approached Wells Fargo to ask if it was shipping gold by stagecoach to the US Mint in 1863.

Wells Fargo historians have found no evidence of it, but said records from that time are incomplete.

Wells Fargo shipped gold by stagecoach, a company archivist wrote in an email to the FBI, but large quantities of the precious metal, as well as gold that had to be transported over long distances, were “better transported by ship or train.”

Getler said the gold may have been transported by wagon, not stagecoach.

The FBI declined to comment on the lawsuit, but denied it kept digging into the night.

The agency said that while geophysical testing had “suggested a potential cultural heritage site at Dents Run, that possibility was not confirmed by the excavation.”

It added: “No gold or other evidence has been found or collected. The only items the FBI removed from the site were equipment and supplies brought in for the excavation.”