‘Amicable’ end to treasure hunt

It took three-anda-half years, but James Wagner is happy, even if he wasn’t paid back with Hernán Cortés’ shipwreck treasure.

In 2014 the Palm Beach Gardens investor made a short-term business loan of $190,000 to an associate of a treasure-hunting company controlled by West Palm Beach businessman Victor Benilous.

Wagner was to get his money back in four months with 10 percent interest. If the borrower defaulted, Benilous’ company would turn over collateral worth 150 percent of Wagner’s investment: $285,000 — in shipwreck treasure.

Wagner, who’d been wooed by Benilous and associates for the better part of a year, felt the deal couldn’t go wrong.

“I didn’t realize that it was designed to default, and when I would go to get my collateral that the collateral would be valued at this immense number that was completely fraudulent,” Tony Doris Wagner told The Palm Beach Post in 2016.

Each detail of the alleged scheme was more bizarre than the last, as described in a lawsuit Wagner filed after the borrower defaulted. To advance his interests, Benilous had anointed himself a doctor of theology, faked a Time magazine cover and claimed he used a psychic to zero-in on the ship. The treasure consisted of lesser jewels experts said couldn’t have come from conquistador Cortés’ stash, and which he showed to business prospects at a headquarters dubbed “the treasure room” inside the now-defunct Ambrosia pizza parlor on South Dixie Highway.

But on April 19, Wagner won a hard-fought settlement, for an amount a judge’s order prevents him from disclosing. The settlement required him to withdraw his claims that Benilous faked the shipwreck story.

“It has been amicably resolved,” Wagner’s attorney, Scott Zappolo, said Tuesday. How amicably? “Amicably,” he said a halfdozen times, when nudged repeatedly for details. “Ami- cably. I’m smiling.”

Experts buttressed Wagner’s case by testifying that the emeralds that supposedly came from Cortés exploits in the 1500s likely came from a Brazilian mine that didn’t open until the 1920s. They were worth a tiny fraction of what Benilous claimed, they said.

Wagner’s side also argued that, if the emeralds were authentic, then under international law they must be returned to Cortés’ descendants, whose representative also testified on Wagner’s behalf.

What does Wagner have to say about the settlement? Did Benilous finally pay the $280,000-plus that Wagner sought?

“He says it has been amicably resolved,” Zappolo said on Wagner’s behalf.

Neither Benilous nor his New York attorney, Steven Molo, could be reached for comment.