Hollywood star Brad Pitt recently revealed that he was swindled by a conman into going on a wild treasure hunt on his property – all in search of ‘millions of dollars’ worth of gold’.
Speaking to GQ Magazine, the 58-year old Bullet Train actor was approached by a man, sometime during the 2010s – who convinced him that his estate in Provence, called Château Miraval, was sitting atop a cache of gold dating back to the medieval ages.
As the story goes, one of the estate’s medieval owners had stolen several million dollars worth of gold from the Levant, presumably somewhere around the 13th century. The era was marked by several ‘Crusades’ led by West European Christians, who marched towards Jerusalem with the intent of overthrowing its Islamic rulers – looting and pillaging thousands of settlements along the way.
“I got obsessed,” Pitt admitted. “Like for a year, this was all I could think about, just the excitement of it all.” Excited at the prospect of a real-life treasure hunt, Pitt quickly purchased a bunch of radar equipment and began to scour his property down.
Ultimately, his efforts proved fruitless. Pitt admitted that the man who started the entire thing was seeking a financial investment in ‘some kind of radar company,’ leaving the actor a bit confused as to why he let himself get so carried away.
“Maybe it has something to do with where I grew up, because in the Ozark Mountains there were always stories of hidden caches of gold.” The experience was, according to him, “pretty foolish in the end. It was just the hunt that was exciting.”
The famed property on which Pitt conducted his failed treasure hunt was purchased by him and his ex-wife Angelina Jolie.
Long before the couple split in 2019, they invested in the thousand-acre property back in 2008, setting up a multimillion rosé winery on the land. It also houses Miraval Studios – a state-of-the-art recording studio with a long history dating back to the 1970s.
The two also held their wedding on the estate back in 2014, before it made headlines once more this year as Jolie sold her stake in the winery, prompting a lawsuit from Pitt.
(Featured Image Credits: Sony Pictures Releasing)
