An 80-year-old American novelist and her husband are among several people facing a possible trial in France over the illegal sale of gold bars plundered from an 18th-century shipwreck, after French prosecutors requested the case go to court.

Eleonor "Gay" Courter and her 82-year-old husband Philip have been accused of helping to sell the bullion online for a French diver who stole it decades ago, but have denied knowledge of any wrongdoing.

Le Prince de Conty, a French ship trading with Asia, sank off the coast of Brittany during a stormy night in the winter of 1746. Of the 229 men aboard, only 45 managed to survive, according to France's culture ministry.

Its wreck was discovered more than two centuries later, in 1974, lying in 30 to 50 feet of water near the island of Belle-Ile-en-Mer.

The wreck was looted in 1975 after a gold ingot was discovered during a site survey.

Some of the ship's looted gold bars eventually found their way to an auction in San Francisco, CBS Bay Area reported.

In 2018, the head of France's underwater archaeology department Michel L'Hour spotted a suspicious sale of five gold ingots on a U.S. auction house website.

He told U.S. authorities he believed they hailed from the Prince de Conty, and they seized the treasure, returning it to France in 2022.

Courter said she had been given the precious metal by a couple of French friends, Annette May Pesty, today 78, and her now deceased partner Gerard.

Pesty had told the "Antiques Roadshow" television series in 1999 that she discovered the gold while diving off the west African island of Cape Verde.

But investigators found this to be unlikely and instead focused on her brother-in-law, now 77-year-old underwater photographer Yves Gladu.

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