Pirates used to bury their treasure for safekeeping.

Unfortunately none of them seemed to be operating in Venice.

That didn't stop a group of pranksters from punking beach-goers — “Sex Toy” Dave Levine of Millionaire Matchmaker allegedly among them — over the weekend with a fake reveal of a treasure chest found buried in the sand:

The guys who buried the chest the night before showed up on a warm Memorial Day weekend afternoon to then pretended to make the find using a metal detector.

As they began to shovel out sand and fake-discover the chest, people form a crowd and chant, “Open it, open it!”

But when the chest was finally popped opened, what appeared to be gold coins were actually …

… chocolates wrapped in gold-colored foil.

Good one.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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