The gold plates that disappeared from Father Crespi's small museum belonged to the Tayos Caves.

The gold plates found in the Tayos Caves were given to Father Carlos Crespi Croci by the Jívaro tribe (of Ecuador) during the first half of the 20th century. However, these plates disappeared, according to Carlos Crespi, who also states that his story is the story of humanity. Carlos Crespi Croci, an Italian Salesian priest and documentary filmmaker, learned about the Tayos Caves in the 1920s because a documentary about the Shuar indigenous people was made in 1927. A collection of pieces that Crespi claims were given to him by members of the Shuar community were stored in the Carlos Crespi Croci Private Museum, located in Cuenca. Most of the Shuar and pre-Shuar artifacts were sold or lost in the 1962 fire, leaving only a few videos and photographs. These objects vanished from the Salesian convent in Cuenca after the Salesian priest's death in 1982. In occult writings, it has been claimed that Freemasonry in several countries was interested during this period in discovering the incredible metal library that a Hungarian-Argentine author, János Juan Móricz (1923–1991), supposedly found in a cave during the 1960s. The Swiss author Erich von Däniken later popularized this in his book Gold of the Gods. Furthermore, a Mormon group concluded that the metal plates mentioned in the book of the prophet Joseph Smith are, in fact, those that existed in the Underground Cavern according to Móricz. This is because the angel Moroni, mentioned in Smith's work, has a name similar to that of the province where the cave is located: Morona Santiago.