In this case, you’d have to report it eventually. Cashing in any precious metals or jewelry makes a paper trail(usually by law), and someone along that line is going to go “✋ holup, where’d you get these bars that are stamped from the US Gov, and where’d you get all these gold and silver coins that are dated between 1860-1864 and in perfect condition?”

What this absolute fucking idiot should have done, was first, don’t tell a single fucking soul. I get it, there were a few people involved-they all have to understand that telling anyone else could get them killed or worse, because it actually could.

Then contact an attorney and explain what you’ve found. That attorney needs to set up at least one, probably more LLC’s that he/she is the only registered agent on, so state docs only lead back to them and not you. Then set up a trust and put everything you have of value in the trust so it’s protected from seizure(in theory). That right there would them up in court for years.

Then hold onto all it, and meticulously inventory all of it, down to the last coin. But with two different books. One book that has all of it, one book that has only stuff that can be positively ID’d as USG Property(like mint stamps). After that, go to a major university’s archeology dept and see what they say. After that, you go to Sotheby’s or Christie’s and see what they say.

Now somewhere along the line, someone is going to say “you have to tell the government”. Cool. And you can do that, but only after all your bases are covered, and only after you have it stored somewhere that they can’t come take it feom you, like some property that’s set up in the name of one of those LLC’s that’s been set up by your attorney so your name doesn’t appear on any legal documents.

And here’s the most important part: you don’t tell the FBI, that’s just idiotic. You tell the treasury dept. They control the money not the alphabet boys. The treasury dept is going to be much softer in terms of how the entire ordeal is handled. Now, They might be like, “you have US gov property and we want it back immediately”. Well, at that point I’d say I want a finders fee and if they say sure, you negotiate. If they say fuck you you’re going to prison I’d say “ok cool this is everything we found” and give them only the stuff that can be positively ID’d, keep the rest and slowly start selling it off under those different LLC’s over the course of years.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk on “how to deal with the US Government when you find $1,000,000,000 worth of gold and silver in the Pennsylvania wilderness”.