By Tim Binnall
A pair of Pennsylvania treasure hunters have scored a major victory in their longstanding legal battle with the FBI over a mysterious dig for a legendary horde of lost Civil War gold. The latest development in the highly contentious case reportedly came about this week when a federal judge sided with Dennis and Ken Parada in their quest to receive files about the event from the Justice Department. At the heart of the matter is a 2018 expedition that unfolded in a Pennsylvania state forest wherein the FBI went looking for an apocryphal cache of gold bars that vanished during the Civil War.
Having led the federal government to the spot where they believe the gold was located before being squeezed out of the search, the Paradas have expressed considerable skepticism over the FBI's claim that the dig turned up nothing. As such, for the last four years, they have been on a different kind of treasure hunt in the form of a serpentine series of lawsuits looking to have their doubts confirmed and, if possible, receive a share of the riches that, they assert, were spirited away from the area under a cloak of secrecy. While the arduous and winding nature of the legal battle suggests that the proverbial finish line it not yet within reach, it just might soon be in sight.
After being told by the Justice Department that the government possessed a jaw-dropping 2,400 pages of materials and 17 videos from the 2018 treasure hunt, but that it would take years for the files to be released to the public, the Paradas sued the FBI this past January in the hopes of forcing them to speed up the process. The case finally made it to court this week and a judge found the treasure hunters' argument to be compelling enough that he ordered the DOJ to start handing over the documents in batches of 1,000 files per month within the next 30 days. An even more promising aspect of the ruling is that the government must deliver a specific document that the Paradas believe could be the key to the whole case.
That highly desired file is a report from a geophysical consulting firm that scanned the area where the treasure was believed to be hidden and purportedly found a rather sizeable mass that seemed to correlate with an enormous amount of gold. The study had previously only been revealed in passing as part of an application for a seizure warrant filed by the FBI, but now it would appear that the Paradas will get their hands on the actual documentation along with, eventually, all of the government material pertaining to the dig. While it remains to be seen whether or not the vast sea of paperwork can provide clarity on what became of the controversial dig, it's a safe bet that the treasure hunters will keep fighting until they finally find out.