"Tommy Thompson," an American underwater treasure hunter, was released from prison after more than 10 years of confinement for refusing to disclose the hiding place of gold coins from a 19th-century shipwreck, with about 500 gold coins still unaccounted for.
Tommy Thompson, a 73-year-old American underwater treasure hunter, was released from prison after nearly 10 years of incarceration for refusing to reveal the location of gold coins recovered from a famous shipwreck, with roughly 500 gold coins still missing.
Thompson discovered multi-million-dollar treasure from the SS Central America, which sank off the coast of South Carolina in 1857. The ship was nicknamed the "Ship of Gold."
The ship was carrying newly mined gold from San Francisco weighing over 30,000 pounds to the East Coast to serve as bank reserves. However, it sank to a depth of about 7,000 feet, with 425 passengers and crew aboard. This event contributed to the U.S. financial crisis of 1857.
In 1988, Thompson, then an ocean engineer at Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio, and his team recovered large amounts of gold bars and coins from the seabed. Some of the gold was sold to a gold marketing company in 2000, valued at about $50 million.
However, 161 investors who had pooled $12.7 million with Thompson accused him of fraud and failing to share profits as promised. They filed a lawsuit in 2005 after not receiving their share from the treasure sale. Criminal filings stated the recovered gold bars and coins could be worth up to $400 million.
Thompson fled in 2012 during court proceedings and was arrested in 2015 with an associate in Boca Raton, Florida, after years on the run. They had stayed in a hotel for two years using fake names, paid cash for rooms, and used taxis or public transport to avoid detection.
The court found him guilty of contempt for refusing to answer questions about the whereabouts of approximately 500 missing gold coins and sentenced him in December 2015 to 24 months in prison.
However, the contempt sentence in the civil case could be extended indefinitely until Thompson complied with the court order, which meant revealing the location of the missing gold coins.
Last year, a judge ended the confinement, reasoning that Thompson was unlikely to reveal information about the missing gold coins. Consequently, he was released after spending more than a decade in prison.
,BBC