18-year-old teenager found gold worth 9 million euros while laying sewer pipes in Belgium

Eighteen-year-old Kobe, working a summer job on a construction site, stumbled onto a stash of gold worth roughly 9 million euros. The find happened on a Tuesday morning as the crew dug trenches for a new sewer system on the grounds of a former brewery.

Kobe told reporters:

We suddenly saw something lying there. At first I thought they were one-euro coins. So we started digging them up. Then we saw a gold bar. Turns out the find was a bit bigger than we thought.

The workers had to remove a chunk of the foundation to lay the pipe, and that's when the contents of the hiding spot came into view. The first reaction was disbelief, since nobody was expecting gold there.

The stash consisted of gold coins, nuggets, and numbered bars packed into a bag hidden inside a bricked-over cellar wall. The hiding place sat beneath a villa built at the end of the 19th century for Theofiel Van Assche, owner of the brewery. There was no safe involved – the gold was simply walled in with brick.

Mario, who supervised the work, said:

It was a crazy feeling.

The workers shouted that they'd found gold, and Mario came down, picked up the bars, and kept digging up more coins with the crew until the scale of the discovery became clear. Calls to management and the police followed.

Brewing on the site began in 1899 and stopped in 1970. The wrought-iron gates of the protected historic building still carry the initials "VA." Now the organization CAW Oost-Vlaanderen is converting the complex into offices and housing, leaving little more than the original walls standing.

Police catalogued the find and moved it to a secure federal vault. Authorities also warned people against showing up at the site hoping to find more, noting that all the gold has already been removed.

The legal side of things is expected to drag on. Prosecutors in East Flanders first need to confirm the bars weren't stolen or tied to criminal proceeds, after which the case will likely turn into a messy civil dispute.

The construction contractor, the social organization that owns the building, and descendants of the once-wealthy Van Assche family could all stake a claim to part of the sum. Belgian law gives potential owners at least five years to come forward. Piet Buyse, former mayor of Dendermonde, suggested the family fortune may have stayed within the bloodline, with part of the wealth converted into gold and tucked away somewhere safe.

Kobe and his coworkers realized right away that a find of this size would have to be handed over, and they're hoping to eventually receive a reward for discovering the treasure. In dollar terms, the gold is valued at around 10.4 million.