Chelsea Gotta, the winner of the 2023 event, is accused of having help from someone who offered to split the prize money.
Since 2020, John Maxim and David Cline have been producing the annual Utah Treasure Hunt, inviting adventurers from around the country to search for a cash prize hidden somewhere in the Utah foothills. This May, Chelsea Gotta of Pella, IA found the $25,000 treasure after 51 days of searching. But her win has been mired in controversy as she stands accused of cheating.
Reddit users were quick to call Gotta's win into question. Skeptics claimed that a purported leak led a woman named Jaqui to help Gotta find the cash in exchange for $5,000 of the prize money. Maxim and Cline appeared on the Cache Me Outside podcast, which centers around the annual tradition, earlier this month to share their side of the story.
To locate the treasure, hunters need to solve a poem created by Cline and Maxim. Gotta confessed to the founders that Jaqui sent her the solution shortly before she found the treasure, but they believe that it didn't disqualify her as she did almost all of the searching on her own.
"She worked her butt off, and she was, like all the other treasure hunters, up late trying to get stuff," Cline said. "Even if it was leaked, which we're pretty sure it wasn't, [Gotta] still did nothing wrong." He acknowledged that she "doesn't know who this person is" and that Jaqui is "just some random person in the ether that has another idea, just like hundreds of others."
"She won this thing fair and square. One hundred percent," Maxim added. He explained that Gotta was one of the top treasure hunters the whole time and didn't like the "guilty until proven innocent" attitude that many online users were taking.
As for future treasure hunts, Cline and Maxim plan to have a "heart-to-heart" and see how they want to proceed.
"We still don't know if we're going to do another [treasure hunt], but we'll see," Cline said. He and Maxim put in $22,000 toward this year's hunt with the condition that it remain fun for them. Needless to say, it wasn't. "Once this whole thing broke, that was the very first time that me and John looked at each other and were like, 'Why are we even doing this?'" Cline said.
"I hope after four years of doing this, even after all this craziness, that people believe that we really are trying to be as fair and honest and open as possible," Cline continued. "But even after all of this, if you still don't, then just don't waste your time in the future looking for it."
Stay tuned to learn the fate of Utah Treasure Hunts and whether you can lace up your boots and try to find another prize yourself.
