Five people, including the American novelist Eleanor "Gay" Courter, 82, will stand trial in France next May over the sale of gold bars looted from an 18th-century shipwreck. The defendants, all charged with conspiracy, will appear before a criminal court in Brest on 27 May 2027. Alongside Courter and her husband Philip, 84, are the underwater photographer Yves Gladu, 79, his wife Brigitte, 76, and his sister-in-law Annette May Pesty, 80. Some also face money laundering and receiving stolen goods charges.

The gold came from Le Prince de Conty, a French trading vessel that sank off Brittany in 1746 and was found in 1974 near Belle-Île-en-Mer. The site was plundered the following year, and legal disputes dragged on until the mid-1980s, when archaeologists recovered Chinese porcelain, tea crates and three gold ingots. A storm later that year reburied the wreck. The investigation began in 2018, when Michel L'Hour, then head of France's underwater archaeology service, spotted five gold ingots listed on a US auction-house website. The bars were seized and returned to France in 2022.

Investigators identified Courter as the seller. She said the gold had been given to her by Pesty and Pesty's late partner, Gérard. Pesty had shown the bars on Antiques Roadshow in 1999, saying she had found them diving near Cape Verde, a story investigators found implausible. In custody in 2022, Gladu admitted taking 16 gold bars from the wreck in 40 dives between 1976 and 1999, and said he had sold them in 2006 to a retired military officer in Switzerland. Investigators established, however, that Gladu had known the couple since the 1980s.

The Courters were detained in 2022 and placed under house arrest. Investigators say the couple at one point held at least 23 gold bars and sold 18 of them for nearly $200,000, money they say was destined for Gladu. Their lawyer, Grégory Lévy, has said the couple did not know the gold was looted and did not profit from the sales, and will argue for their acquittal. Courter has written no book involving looted shipwreck gold.