The Riveting True Story Behind Netflix’s Treasure Hunt Docuseries Gold & Greed

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure.

To the uninitiated, the idea of a modern-day treasure hunt may seem like something of a fool’s errand. But as a new Netflix docuseries makes abundantly clear, there’s a thriving community of contemporary treasure seekers who view it as quite the opposite.

Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure, all three episodes of which are now streaming, chronicles the true story behind the decade-long search for a treasure chest filled with over $1 million worth of gold, jewels, and other valuables hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The hunt was set in motion in 2010 by then-80-year-old Forrest Fenn, an eccentric millionaire art dealer who stashed the chest in the wilderness before publishing a memoir containing a cryptic 24-line poem that provided clues about the treasure’s location. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Gold & Greed, which was directed by Jared McGilliard and filmed in the aftermath of the 2020 discovery of the treasure, centers on a few of the die-hard fortune chasers who were motivated enough by Fenn’s challenge to spend years of their lives looking for his hidden box of riches, including retiree Cynthia Meachum, computer scientist Justin Posey, and the father-son team of the Hurst family. While Fenn’s treasure hunt inspired a sense of adventure in many searchers, the documentary also explores the dark side of the quest, which resulted in five deaths, a harrowing stalking case, and a good deal of crushing disappointment.

The search begins

The idea for the hunt came to Fenn after he was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1988. Believing his prognosis was terminal, Fenn originally planned to write the puzzle poem, hide the treasure, and eventually hike back out to that same location and take his own life, hoping someone would one day discover the riches that remained at his final resting spot. After he unexpectedly recovered, he decided to hide the treasure anyway and, more than two decades after receiving his diagnosis, self-published the poem in his memoir, The Thrill of the Chase.

Little did Fenn know that his efforts would end up gaining significant media attention and many thousands of people would ultimately take a crack at solving his riddle. As the years wore on, the treasure hunt became a massive phenomenon that sparked degrees of dedication ranging from casual interest to outright obsession in its participants.

Controversy abounds

Although Fenn made it clear that people should refrain from searching for the treasure “any place where an 80-year-old man couldn’t put it,” over time, seekers began coming up with increasingly wild solutions to his puzzle. This led to often inexperienced hikers putting themselves in dangerous situations and, in 2016, 54-year-old Randy Bilyeu became the first person to die in pursuit of the chest. Bilyeu’s remains would eventually be found along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico more than seven months after his ex-wife reported him missing.

Four more seekers ultimately lost their lives over the next four years. However, despite pleas from former New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas and others to call off the hunt, Fenn refused. “I have given a lot of thought about ending the search, but I am not sure what that would accomplish,” he said in a 2017 statement.

As the documentary shows, the hunt also resulted in several incidents of trespass and illegal activity, death threats to Fenn and his family, and Fenn’s granddaughter being stalked by a man who had come to believe she was the treasure in question. Still, the show went on.

The treasure is found

On June 6, 2020, the hunt at long last came to an end when then-32-year-old medical student Jack Stuef found Fenn’s treasure chest in an undisclosed location in Wyoming after searching for two years. Fenn’s blog posts about the discovery—in which he confirmed it was in fact his treasure but revealed neither Stuef’s identity nor the box’s long-sought-after hiding place—sent shockwaves through the treasure hunting community, with many expressing doubt and disbelief that the find was legitimate. Fenn would die of natural causes just a few months later in September 2020.

While Stueff originally wanted to maintain his anonymity, he ended up making his identity public in December 2020 in order to get ahead of what he referred to in a Medium essay as a “meritless lawsuit” that would make his name a matter of public record. “Forrest and his family endured stalkers, death threats, home invasions, frivolous lawsuits, and a potential kidnapping—all at the hands of people with delusions related to his treasure,” he wrote. “I don’t want those things to happen to me and my family.”

He would go on to sell the majority of Fenn’s treasure at auction in 2022 for a total of around $1.3 million. Although Stuef has never revealed the exact location of where the chest was hidden, as is shown in the documentary, Posey later used clues he observed in photos taken at the site to zero in on where it seems it was likely found in Yellowstone National Park.

A new twist

Despite trying and failing to purchase Fenn’s treasure when it was up for auction in 2022, Posey reveals in the finale of Gold & Greed that he has decided to follow in Fenn’s footsteps by creating his own treasure hunt. Oh, and he “managed to sneak in some hints” while filming the Netflix series.

“No one knows what the hints are besides me, not even the producers,” he says. “So it’s worth your time to watch and listen closely.”

Happy hunting, we guess.