How a meteorologist used his expertise to find treasure hidden in Massachusetts

    FRANKLIN COUNTY, Massachusetts (WBZ) -- It's a mystery within a mystery and both now have answers. For weeks, a $26,000 gold statue was hidden in the woods as part of a treasure hunt. Seekers followed daily clues and an ever-shrinking circle on a map that eventually pushed the search into Massachusetts. The game creators are New Hampshire natives who never expected anyone to find it this soon, but it has been snatched. The interaction was caught on a trail camera that monitors the prize.

"We were like is he CIA? On the camera, he looked like Snowden. Snowden-esque," laughed Jason Rohrer and Tom Bailey, creators of Project Skydrop. "Suddenly I heard my wife shouting something is gone, something is gone! I thought my kid left something at the house, then she was like the treasure is gone!"

The duo had little information about the winner other than secondhand accounts from people who met him as he exited the forest.

"He told them he was a meteorologist. We thought maybe that's a cover," joked Rohrer and Bailey.

It's not a cover, but a fact. The man who snagged the prize is Dan Leonard, a Senior Meteorologist with The Weather Company. The web cam on the trophy showed the weather in the sky along with the temperature at the time. Leonard was able to use his expertise to target a 20-30-mile radius very quickly.

"I was able to use the Mesonet stations to triangulate. These are basically weather stations owned by individual people," said Leonard. "I started to get an idea that this is lining up really nicely with the temperatures I am seeing on the web camera."

He narrowed it to an area in Franklin County, however when he set out to find it, he passed it at first.

"The leaves on the ground perfectly masked the trophy," said Leonard. "I probably was within six inches of it and didn't know it."

He turned around and spotted a tree that he recognized from the images on the cameras, and then he was able to find it.

Markings on the statue help to reveal a pass phrase that unlocks $87,000 in a bitcoin purse. The money comes from premium entry fees to the contest. Original reports to the creators said that Leonard didn't even want the money, but just the trophy.

"When talking to him about bitcoin, [he said] I don't really care about retrieving the bounty, so we were very confused," says Bailey.

"There has been a lot of conspiracy theories associated with this. Somehow somebody posted that I wasn't in this for the money. I don't know where that came from exactly," corrects Leonard, who says he was in the hunt for the trophy, and the money was secondary. "Of course I am not going to turn down $80,000."

The creators have moved on from giving the purse by bitcoin, and are seeking an easier method, however the code to access the money is still very much in play.

"Right now, my wife and I are pretty close," said Leonard.

He plans to use the money for his 18-month-old son's future college tuition, and the rest he will donate to wildlife and nature conservation charities. He says some of the money may be given as an additional prize for treasure seekers.

As for the creators, they may have bigger plans on the horizon.

"We have a number of offers from television companies wanting to make a narrative film out of this or turn it into some sort of unscripted reality contest show," said Rohrer.