Dennis Parada waged a authorized battle to drive the FBI to show over information of its excavation in Dents Run, Pennsylvania, the place native lore says an 1863 cargo of Union gold disappeared on its option to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. The FBI, which went to Dents Run after refined testing prompt tons of gold is perhaps buried there, has lengthy insisted the dig got here up empty.

Parada and his advisers, who’ve spent numerous hours poring over the newly launched authorities information, imagine in any other case. They accuse the FBI of distorting key proof and improperly withholding information in an obvious effort to hide the restoration of a historic, extraordinarily beneficial gold cache. The FBI defends its dealing with of the supplies.

Parada’s dispute with the FBI is enjoying out in federal courtroom, the place a choose overseeing the case should determine whether or not the FBI should launch its operational plan for the gold dig and different information it needs to maintain secret. The choose might additionally order the FBI to maintain in search of further supplies to show over to the treasure hunter.

“We really feel we had been double-crossed and lied to,” Parada stated in an interview at his cramped, wood-paneled workplace, the place large drill bits and high-end metallic detectors compete for house with rusty miners’ picks, Civil Battle-era cannon components and different odds and ends he’s dug up over time.

“The reality will come out,” stated Parada, co-founder of the treasure-hunting outfit Finders Keepers. Fixing the thriller will not be his solely objective — he had hoped to earn a finder’s price from the potential restoration of a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} price of gold.

An FBI spokesperson declined to reply questions concerning the company’s gold dig information or reply to the coverup allegations, citing the continued litigation. Final 12 months, the FBI launched an announcement publicly acknowledging for the primary time that it had been in search of gold in Dents Run. The assertion stated the FBI didn’t discover any, including the company “continues to unequivocally reject any claims or hypothesis on the contrary.”

There may be little proof within the historic document to counsel that an Military detachment misplaced a gold cargo within the Pennsylvania wilderness — presumably the results of an ambush by Accomplice sympathizers — however the legend has impressed generations of treasure hunters, Parada amongst them.

He and his son spent years in search of the fabled gold of Dents Run, finally guiding the FBI to a distant woodland web site 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh the place they are saying their devices recognized a big amount of metallic. The FBI introduced in a geophysical consulting agency whose delicate tools detected a 7- to 9-ton mass suggestive of gold.

Armed with a warrant, a group of FBI brokers got here in March 2018 to dig up the hillside. An FBI videographer was available to doc it, at one level interviewing a Philadelphia-based agent on the FBI’s art-crime group who defined why the FBI was within the woods of certainly one of Pennsylvania’s most sparsely populated counties.

“We’ve recognized by way of our investigation a web site that we imagine has U.S. property, which features a important sum of base metallic which is effective … notably gold, possibly silver,” the agent stated on the video, his face blurred by the FBI to guard his privateness.

Calling it a “155-year-old chilly case,” he stated the FBI had corroborated Parada’s details about the situation of the reputed gold by way of “scientific testing.” He burdened the check outcomes didn’t show the presence of gold. Solely a dig would assist legislation enforcement “unravel this story as soon as and for all,” the agent stated.

Parada obtained the video and different FBI information by way of a Freedom of Data Act lawsuit, hoping they might assist reply lingering questions on what passed off at Dents Run 5 years in the past. Parada was largely evaded the dig web site whereas the FBI did its work.

He suspects the company performed a clandestine, in a single day dig between the primary and second days of the court-authorized excavation, discovered the gold, and spirited it away. Residents have beforehand advised of listening to a backhoe and jackhammer in a single day — when the dig was presupposed to have been paused — and seeing a convoy of FBI autos, together with massive armored vans. The FBI has denied it performed an in a single day dig.

Parada and a advisor, Warren Getler, have centered on a handful of FBI pictures and an accompanying picture log which have them questioning the FBI’s official gold dig timeline. At challenge is the presence or absence of snow within the pictures and the timing of a storm that briefly disrupted operations. For instance, an FBI picture that was presupposed to have been taken about an hour after the squall doesn’t present any snow on a big, moss-covered boulder on the dig web site. That very same boulder is snow-covered in a photograph that FBI information point out was taken the subsequent morning — some 15 hours after the storm.

They accuse the FBI of altering the sequence of occasions to hide an in a single day excavation.

“We’ve compelling proof an evening dig passed off, and that the FBI went to some massive effort to cowl up that night time dig,” stated Getler, co-author of “Insurgent Gold,” a guide exploring the potential for buried Civil Battle-era caches of gold and silver.

There are different seeming anomalies within the information, in keeping with Finders Keepers’ authorized movement. Amongst them:

— The FBI initially turned over a whole lot of pictures, however rendered them in low-resolution, high-contrast black-and-white, making it unattainable to inform the time of day they had been taken and even, in some circumstances, what they present. The treasure hunters went again and requested a number of dozen of the pictures in coloration, which the FBI offered.

— The company didn’t present any video of the second and remaining day of the dig. Nor did it produce any pictures or video exhibiting what the FBI’s personal hand-drawn map described as a 30-foot-long, 12-foot-deep trench — which the treasure hunters declare might have solely been dug in a single day. Authorities attorneys acknowledged these gaps within the picture and video document however didn’t elaborate in a courtroom submitting final week.

— The consulting agency employed by the FBI to evaluate the potential for gold produced a report on its findings, however the model given to the treasure hunters appears to be lacking key pages.

— The FBI didn’t present any of its brokers’ journey and expense invoices, which might shed additional mild on the dig timeline.

The information launched to date “solid doubt on the FBI’s declare to have discovered nothing and lift severe and troubling questions concerning the FBI’s conduct through the dig and on this litigation, the place it has gone to nice lengths to distort crucial proof,” Anne Weismann, a lawyer for Finders Keepers, wrote in a authorized submitting that seeks information, together with the FBI’s operational plan, that she says had been improperly withheld.

The Justice Division didn’t tackle the treasure hunters’ most explosive claims of a potential coverup in its newest authorized submitting. The federal government as an alternative advised a federal choose in Washington, D.C., that the FBI had happy its authorized obligation to the treasure hunters to seek for its information of the dig, and requested for the case to be closed.

The choose has but to rule.

Parada stated he’ll preserve asking questions till he will get passable solutions.

“I’ll stick at this till the top, till I do know every little thing that occurred to that gold,” he stated. “How a lot, the place it went to, who has it now. I gotta know.”