Metal detectorist sues FBI for overnight confiscation of 7tons of Civil War gold
fortune.com
fortune.com
I'll tell you why: the gold never existed, this guy is a con artist and his ploy is to pretend the government stole his gold, lose the lawsuit and claim a coverup, then raise money from people using his new "victim of the government" martyr status to make himself some sort of folk hero.
I mean come on; telling the government or anybody about the gold before you even dig it up and see for yourself? Before you even take a picture of the gold to prove it exists? Who would do that? It defies all common sense.
Excavating that magnitude of gold is certainly no small squeeze on the average paycheck. Additionally, the questions from the regulatory agencies when 7t of gold shows up on the market is certainly something worth considering. Finally, the security of keeping the whole operation under wraps while you excavate any of this yourself? Headaches upon headaches.
> 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.
If his claim is true and it took the government only one day and one night to extract 7 tons of gold, then it couldn't have been very deep. He should have dug some of it up. As it stands, this guy has no proof that any gold ever existed at all. He never even laid eyes on the supposed gold.
And if the government had excavators, an army of trucks and possible other machinery, as the article suggests, then I don't see why they wouldn't have been able to extract 7 tons of gold in one night. And a lone treasure hunter may not have access to such resources.
7 ton = 224,000 ounces
Current Au price: ~$1843/oz USD
Total value: ~$412,832,000 USD.
;-)
https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/senate-bill/2665
This article explains that it was made illegal by FDR during the Great Depression, but made legal again in 1974, and that "There Are Currently No Limitations on Owning Bullion" [0]
[0] https://firstnationalbullion.com/is-it-legal-to-possess-gold...
The evidence he's presenting has some pretty suspicious gaps, the government has clearly redacted a lot of his FOIA requests. They are withholding a bunch of information that would be completely innocuous if they actually didn't find anything, so why be difficult about it?
I once worked in hazardous waste disposal. We would get phone calls from police departments who had seized large amounts of cocaine or meth.
They wanted us to “take it off their hands.” That is, pick it up and dispose of it.
We always said “you need to hand it off the appropriate authority, like the FBI.”
I don’t know if the FBI actually helps in situations like this.
But we sure as heck weren’t going to be driving down the highway with truck full cocaine.
Surely, if they had standing for a case, there would be discovery. If not, then the media or them could still crawl all up in govt records with a FOIA. Where is this mythical 7 tons of gold? Why not 2 or 400? There would be lots and lots of records of it if it existed.
My thinking is the media knowing full well there is no there there but would rather exploit some wild almost social media-sharable adventure victim outrage story. I hope they got paid for their tall tale.