An amateur metal detectorist who falsely claimed to have dug up an 1,800-year-old Roman horse brooch which he had purchased on eBay walked free from court today with a suspended sentence.

Funeral director Jason Price, 54, received national publicity after the copper-alloy horse figurine was supposedly unearthed in 2019.

Following the ‘find’, Price told reporters he was left ‘shaking’ after discovering what he initially thought was a piece of litter. ‘My jaw fell’, the fraudster added.

The Royal Navy veteran claimed to have unearthed the item under eight inches of soil in a heavily ploughed field at Leasingham, Lincolnshire, during a 'Detecting for Veterans' charity event in the summer of 2019.

The so-called 'Leasingham Horse Brooch' was acquired and placed on display at The Collection Museum in Lincoln after Price was paid £5,000.

After initially convincing experts, the 'Leasingham horse brooch' was thought to have 'rewritten the understandings around Roman brooches'. It was said to be the first three-dimensional horse brooch to be recorded on the Portable Antiquities Scheme finds database - dating from AD 43-410.

The brooch featured on ‘Great British History Hunters’ on Freeview channel More4 after being described as the 'first known of its kind.'

However doubts began to surface in February 2023 after Price continued to submit other items to Dr Lisa Brundle, the Finds Liason Officer at Lincolnshire County Council, from a second Roman site at Long Bennington. 

Jason Price told reporters he was left ‘shaking’ after discovering the brooch, saying he initially thought was a piece of litter

Price, pictured outside court, admitted planting the Leasingham horse brooch after buying it online, and then getting carried away with the story

When the Leasingham Horse Brooch was submitted to Historic England for tests in February 2024 they confirmed it did not pre-date the 16th Century. Price later admitted purchasing it online.

Declan Austin, prosecuting, told Lincoln Crown Court the authorities began to suspect that some of the 188 items submitted by Price had been "seeded" - terminology used in the detectorist community for being planted in the soil.

A Roman knee brooch which Price claimed to have found at Long Bennington in October 2020 and would have been the first known example of its type in England was discredited by the British Museum, and Price later admitted planting the item.

Examination of a horse figurine and axe Price claimed to have unearthed at Long Bennington in February 2023 were found to have zinc levels too high to be genuine, and a gold ring purported to be Roman contained modern levels of alloy.

Finally a hoard of Roman coins contained in pottery which Price submitted from Long Bennington as a "significant find" in August 2023 was found to have "not been buried in antiquity" after they were examined by the British Museum in September 2024.