This is just one of many easily provable falsehoods. For instance, the dude motel was never owned by the author, there is no room number 4, and reagan never stayed there. If you read too far to walk there is all kinds of stuff that is factually incorrect.

There is no use looking for it because his family plans on profiting from it and likely still have it. The author says he is going to get it himself when the value is up to 12 million dollars which is another clue to what this is about, making money. A bracelet that should only be worth a thousand dollars or so has been inflated to $50,000 and the price of the chest keeps going up to from 250k to over 2 million dollars, prices all arbitrarily set soley by the author and repeated by he media. He and his family ae profiting from selling over priced books under the guise of charity and are working to artificially inflate the prices of items they have.

It is likely that the money is being diverted to his family since no charity is registered with the state of New Mexico or with the federal government so he is not legally authorized to collect money for charitable purposes. The only person known to the public with cancer to have been helped by this was helped through a raffle, not through book proceeds. The author of Thrill if the Chase is just using this whole thing to make money and there is no proof that any of the proceeds from the books have gone to help people with cancer as claimed.

Think Neal Caffrey from the show White Collar or Frank Abagnale from the movie Catch me if you can. Even the story about Eric Sloane is a reference to this-Eric Sloane referenced in the second book was not actually Eric Sloane.that wasn't is real name and he was painting under a psuedonym to make money. Check out F for Fake by Orson Welles-it is about Elmer de Hory and how struggling artist turn to forgeries and fraud to make money. They'd buy the estates of famous painters then produce modern paintings and put whatever name they wanted on them and sell them for top dollar. Hints to this are in Too Far to Walk.in the Elmer de Hory story, Nicolai Fechin, etc. If you research Joseph Henry Sharp paintings for instance you will find that most of them are modern forgeries painted from pictures taken by Sharp. The books are half truth and half fiction. They take items and artificially inflate the value of them, paintings, arrowheads, or whatever by making up elaborate stories. The guy is just using the treasure hunt to make money. It's a ruse, a rigged game you can't win.

Thrill of the chase bookstore