COCOS ISLAND TREASURE A HOAX Público Deposited
- Björn Schöpe published an article in the April 16, 2015 issue of CoinsWeekly with a follow-up on that item last month about a treasure found on Cocos Island. -Editor
On March 10, 2015, the online newspaper ‘World News Daily Report’ announced that an amazing 200 million dollar cache had been found... A photo shows a gold Madonna that is said to have come from the Cathedral of Lima – estimated metal value: more than 1.4 million dollars.
Numismatists were as keen as mustard and the experts in several treasure hunter forums expressed both their envy of the lucky rangers and their wish that the latter would be allowed to keep a decent finder’s reward at least.
Only a few days later, a number of media proved that report to be a hoax. Some of the images originated from the image hosting service Flickr and official institutions in Costa Rica knew nothing about any treasure.
As a matter of fact, the site ‘World News Daily Report’ is specialized in canards and, as the disclaimer states, it assumes ‘…all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters … are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any persons, living, dead, or undead is purely a miracle.’
Funny. I hadn't seen the follow-up articles and no one sent me any. I'm glad I noticed Björn's story. Checking other articles from the same site would have raised some eyebrows: "WIKILEAKS DOCUMENTS REVEAL APOLLO PROGRAM WAS A FRAUD, MOON LANDINGS NEVER HAPPENED". Um, yeah.
Until Björn's article I hadn't noticed any numismatic publications discussing this, even as a hoax. Thanks! -EditorTo read the complete article, see:
News from Stevenson’s Treasure Island? (http://coinsweekly.com/en/News/4?&id=3368)To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
COCOS ISLAND TREASURE FOUND BY PARK RANGERS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n11a22.html) - 2015-04-19
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