Free Republic

A man who felt like he had won the lottery after finding a bag containing nearly $5,000 in a car park has been charged with larceny. Robert Withington, from Trumbull, Connecticut, said he found the bag of cash on the ground outside a local bank in May and decided to keep it, thinking it was his lucky day. “Everything was in the moment and it was like I hit the lottery. That was it.” According to Trumbull Police, the 56-year-old, who turned himself into police last week, believed he had no obligation to return the bag to its rightful owner....

A father-son duo of Pennsylvania treasure hunters have sued the FBI for failing to produce records chronicling a top-secret excavation the agency administered in the state nearly four years ago that may have yielded a $400million cache of Civil War-era gold. Court documents unsealed earlier this year revealed that the bureau had in fact engaged in the previously undisclosed dig in Elk County in search of the fabled treasure, lost by the US government in 1863. The filing attested that agents engaged in the dig came up empty-handed.Fortune seekers Dennis and Kem Parada, however - who together comprise the lost...

A pair of Pennsylvania treasure hunters and their lawyer are accusing the FBI of playing games and acting suspiciously about a dig at a rural site believed to contain a massive stash of Civil War-era gold -- which may be worth up to $250 million. The accusations from Dennis and Kem Parada, and their attorney, Bill Cluck, came months after the bureau said it dug a hole in Dents Run and found nothing. The father-and-son duo felt convinced that area of state-owned wilderness northeast of Pittsburgh holds a hidden stash of gold and the pair claim the FBI went back...

A Harrisburg attorney said Thursday that a state appeals court has just given him the next clue toward hopefully solving the mystery of whether the FBI dug up a cache of lost Civil War gold worth about $400 million from a remote Pennsylvania forest nearly three years ago. That clue, William J. Cluck said, is the name of the federal magistrate judge who ordered all records of the March 2018 excavation in the Dent’s Run area of Elk County to be sealed from public view. Cluck said he can use that information, secured through his latest Right-to-Know Law appeal to...

Go for the gold? The U.S. government went for it. FBI agents were looking for an extremely valuable cache of fabled Civil War-era gold — possibly tons of it — when they excavated a remote woodland site in Pennsylvania three years ago this month, according to government emails and other recently released documents in the case. On March 13, 2018, treasure hunters led the FBI to Dent’s Run, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, where legend has it an 1863 shipment of Union gold was either lost or stolen on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia....

This is a rather odd story that I’ve been following for a while now, so bear with me. It’s been featured on a couple of the Travel Channel’s conspiracy theory shows and you’ll see why in a moment if you’re not familiar with it. But a recent development may bring it out of the tinfoil hat column and at least into the realm of possibility. The tale starts in the 1860s when legend has it that a large wagon full of gold bullion was either stolen or “went missing” in a remote area of western Pennsylvania. The shipment had supposedly...

The FBI came out empty handed at the remote Pennsylvania site where Civil War-era gold treasure is rumored to be buried, officials said Monday. Dozens of FBI agents, Pennsylvania state officials and members of a treasure-hunting group dug in a rural site where local lore has it that a Civil War-era gold shipment bound for a U.S. Mint in Philadelphia was either lost or hidden around the time of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. President Abraham Lincoln reportedly ordered the shipment to pay Union Army soldiers, according to a local treasure-hunting group called Finders Keepers.The FBI said it conducted...

When Sgt. Jim Connors tipped back a few too many, he’d talk about the legend of lost Civil War gold, and boast about its whereabouts deep in the hills of Western Pennsylvania. Connors, according to a 1978 United Press International article in the Pittsburgh Press, was part of a special Union detachment tasked with transporting 26 gold bars, each weighing 50 pounds, from West Virginia to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia in the summer of 1863.According to one version of the story, Connors staggered into Lock Haven, in north-central Pennsylvania, as the lone survivor of an ambush. The gold was...

Has $55million worth of lost gold from the Civil War era been found in central Pennsylvania? That's what locals seem to believe after FBI agents, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and treasure hunters Dennis and Kem Parada were seen digging around a remote area in Benezette Township, called Dents Run. Dennis and his son Kem, the owners of the treasure hunting organization Finders Keepers, have claimed for years that 52 gold bars were buried under a fire pit at Dents Run more than 150 years ago during the Battle of Gettysburg.

As a 155-year-old legend goes, a Union Army wagon train left Wheeling, W.Va., before the Battle of Gettysburg, carrying two tons of gold, but never completed its 400-mile mission. The gold was supposed to be used to pay Union soldiers. But it first had to make it to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, according to the Associated Press. It never did. The wagon train traveled northeast and was last spotted in St. Marys, Pa. Searchers found the wagons and the bodies of dead soldiers — and the gold was gone. But maybe not forever. On Friday, dozens of FBI agents,...

ALISO VIEJO - An Orange County Sheriff's Department patrol deputy lost an AR-15 rifle late Tuesday night after placing it on the trunk of a patrol vehicle before becoming distracted and driving away. It was seven hours later when he realized the gun was gone. It has yet to be found. Around 7 p.m. the deputy was preparing to start a shift at the Aliso Viejo station, at 11 Journey. While doing so, he placed the AR-15 rifle -- stored in a black nylon bag with three loaded magazines, each of which can hold up to 30 rounds of ammunition...

A US couple who unearthed gold coins worth more than $10 million might have to return them as they may have been stolen, a report said. The California couple uncovered eight cans filled with more than 1,400 coins on their property, in what is believed to be the most valuable treasure trove ever discovered in the United States. They took them to a firm specializing in ancient coins, Kagin's Inc, which valued them and announced last week that they will sell them, via online retail giant Amazon.

A Rosemount teen got to play high roller for a day after finding a plastic bag containing $18,000 in a highway ditch, and he gave away thousands of dollars to classmates on Tuesday before authorities got involved. Dakota County officials are releasing few details about the source of the money, but they have a pretty compelling clue: When the student, 16, led them back to the spot where he found the money, they discovered 4 pounds of marijuana and some scales. "This is tied in to drugs, obviously," said Sgt. Joe Leku of the Dakota County Drug Task Force. He...

Found in a farmer's field: The 2,000-year-old skeleton of the lost lady of Rome By CHRIS BROOKE Last updated at 09:14am on 23rd November 2007 In her lifetime she was a member of a wealthy family based in a bustling British outpost of the world's mightiest empire. The imperial glory has long faded. But, almost 2,000 years on, archaeologists have discovered a corner of an English field that is forever Rome. They have unearthed a coffin containing a remarkably well-preserved skeleton in the village of Aldborough, near Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire - once the site of a major Roman town, Isurium...

PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - In 1559, a hurricane plunged as many as seven Spanish sailing vessels to the bottom of Pensacola Bay, hampering explorer Don Tristan de Luna's attempt to colonize this section of the Florida Panhandle. Almost 500 years later and 15 years after the first ship was found, another has been discovered, helping archaeologists unlock secrets to Florida's Spanish past. The colony at the site of present-day Pensacola was abandoned in 1561, and no trace of it has been found on land. Teams of University of West Florida archaeology students last summer discovered what they thought was the...

Appeal For 'Free Cash' Updated: 17:28, Thursday June 22, 2006 Police are appealing to pedestrians to hand back the thousands of pounds they pocketed when a mystery man threw a bundle of cash into a busy town centre. People fell to their hands and knees to scoop up the £20 notes when the man released the cash with the worlds: "Who wants free money?" Police believe around £5,000 was literally sent blowing in the wind in Aberystwyth by the unknown benefactor, a 40-year-old man. He drove off and was later arrested for driving offences at nearby Aberaeron. A Dyfed Powys...

Associated Press MURFREESBORO, Ark. – A Kansas woman and her 12-year-old son have a 2.12-carat diamond to take back home with them after a vacation in Arkansas. A news release Saturday from the state Parks and Tourism Department said the pair – Jennifer Jones of Derby, Kansas, and her son Jacob Ballard – found the gem Friday at Crater of Diamonds State Park. Crater of Diamonds State Park is the world's only diamond-producing site open to seaching by the public. According to the news release, Jones and her son found the diamond as they looked near an old mine shaft...

When Roger Cole stepped out of his Land-Rover on Haddiscoe Island, near Yarmouth, he put his foot on what he thought was a pile of old Co-op dividend tokens. On closer inspection, the foreman of the flood defence work site realised they were silver coins and quickly picked up around 200 of them. An expert from Norfolk Landscape Archaeology (NLA) was called in and found a further 100 in the tracks made by a bulldozer. The coins are dated between 1550 and 1646, and the theory of NLA finds liaison officer Dr Adrian Marsden, based at The Castle Museum, Norwich,...

Hector David Herrera Martinez sticks by this story: Someone left on his doorstep the $283,473 that Kimble County sheriff's deputies found in the car he was driving. But authorities believe Herrera, 40, had illicit intentions in mind –- traveling to Mexico without reporting the cash that deputies near Junction seized following a traffic stop on Feb. 17. A federal grand jury in San Antonio indicted Herrera this week on a charge of smuggling bulk currency, and he's expected to make his first federal court appearance in San Antonio in the coming week. Herrera, who lists an address in Bartlesville, Okla.,...

He is a model airplane and tank builder, Boy Scout and Yu-Gi-Oh! enthusiast. Now, Andrew Gieseler is something else: a role model. While walking to the door of a Super Target store in Warrenville on Saturday, Andrew, 12, found a plastic bag stuffed with $9,000 on a deserted stretch of sidewalk. A routine trip to buy sneakers to accommodate his growing feet suddenly became exciting and mysterious. He picked up the bag and read the two white stickers on it, one specifying the amount; the other stating the bill denominations. "We could see it was money and I said, `What...