Fenn treasure hunter pleads guilty for damage caused in Yellowstone Park

The man, 52-year-old Rodrick Dow Craythorn, had been hunting for a buried treasure chest hidden 10 years ago by an antiquities dealer named Forrest Fenn. Fenn himself died last September at the age of 90, and the finder has since come forward: 32-year-old Jack Stuef, a medical student originally from Michigan.As we've reported previously, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Fenn buried a treasure chest filled with gold, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. In June, a Chicago real estate lawyer named Barbara Andersen told the Santa Fe New Mexican that she planned to file a federal injunction, claiming that she solved the puzzle but her solution was stolen by an unnamed defendant who "followed and cheated me to get the chest." Also crying foul is an Arizona man named Brian Erskine, who also claims to have solved the puzzle and thinks Fenn's timing with his announcement of the discovery is "suspect."It was the Andersen lawsuit that led Stuef to finally come forward in a December 2020 interview with journalist Daniel Barbarisi—a fellow treasure hunter—published in Outside magazine, who independently verified Stuef's claim with the Fenn family.