Featured Image Credit: ABC
Topics: Antiques Roadshow, Crime, History
Jess Battison
Episodes of Antiques Roadshow are that kind of afternoon telly you can just flick on and watch mindlessly. Maybe it’ll start making you think about the treasures you might have stuffed up in the loft, or you’ll judge other people’s belongings.
Sometimes it can get quite exciting though, when something is valued at a surprising high or when people ‘collapse’ in amazement.
But there was quite the twist when an older Antiques Roadshow episode led to an American couple being arrested in the UK for trafficking a ‘national treasure’.
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It all goes back to 1986, when Philip and Gay Courter’s French pals, Gerard and Annette Pesty, presented them with some gold bars.
Having become very close, the Floridians weren’t so shocked when Gerard revealed the about twenty ingots and asked them to hold on to some of them while they searched for an American buyer.
The Courters stashed the gold in their ceiling in Florida before eventually moving it to a safe-deposit box. They ended up keeping them for 15 years before attempting to sell them on eBay.
It’s reported that they even consulted with customs officials and declared the items with the IRS. The couple believed they were acting legitimately and had handled the gold in a legally clear way. But on 29 June 2022, the couple were returning on a cruise ship from a trip around Norway when ship officials instructed them to hand over their passports before they were escorted off the boat in Southampton.
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The Americans were then told they were under arrest in connection to looted gold bars from the Prince de Conty.
Way back in 1746, the ship known as the Prince de Conty was carrying roughly 100 gold ingots when it crashed off the coast of Brittany, France.
The French East India Company had attempted to recover the precious cargo, but the gold couldn’t be found.
The shipwreck then went untouched for two centuries, pretty much forgotten. But in 1974, Normandy men Patrick Lizé and Jean-Claude Lescure headed to the site and eventually discovered some of the lost treasure.
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They didn’t declare it to officials straight away, and The New Yorker said when Lizé did two months later, he only mentioned ‘five entirely corroded cannons’ rather than the ingots.
Following investigations, only two ingots were recovered with charges brought against some of the looters.
So, fast-forward to 1985, and France's Underwater Archaeology Research Department DRASSM found three ingots at the site, leading to dive leader Michel L’Hour developing a greater interest in the case.
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In 1995, he was sent a photo of around 20 gold bars on the ocean floors and kept it in a safe. Then, in 2017, he was alerted to a listing at a California auction house offering five gold ingots which included a link to a 1999 episode of Antiques Roadshow.
Filmed in Florida, it was Annette Pesty showcasing the bars with a photograph to illustrate her find – the same photo L’Hour had.
It had been taken by Yves Gladu, an underwater photographer for Lizé, helping to confirm these were the looted bars.
The Pesty and Gladu homes were raided, and while Yves confessed to selling around 20 bars in Switzerland, he denied connection to the hoard the Pestys gave to the Courters.
The listing link to Antiques Roadshow however lead French authorities to the American couple with warrants issued for their arrest, alleging they were involved in trafficking a ‘national treasure belonging to France’.
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The couple were eventually released from the UK jail on bail and are set to stand trial later this year.
Their solicitor, Gregory Levy, said to The New Yorker: "We will try to demonstrate that there was no criminal intention. They sold on eBay. When you want to traffic something, you don't go on eBay, right?”
Gay added: "It is not an exaggeration to say that nothing in my life prepared me for this, and I am no longer the same person I was. The gold was a tiny fragment of our lives together – meaningless, until it wasn't."