A former deep sea treasure hunter made one of Great Shipwreck Discoveries in American History Federal records show that the company, which spent more than a decade in prison after refusing to disclose the whereabouts of some of its missing gold coins, is now out of prison.
Tommy Thompson, who in 1988 found what was known as a gold ship off the coast of South Carolina, was released last Wednesday, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records reviewed by The Associated Press.
Thompson, an Ohio-born research scientist, was hailed as a hero after finding the SS Central America and thousands of pounds of sunken treasure that had been lying at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for more than 150 years.
But in the decades that followed, he battled investors who accused him of cheating them out of millions, then spent years on the run before being sent to prison on corruption charges. Refusal of court orders While he confirmed that he did not know what happened to the 500 coins minted from the ship’s gold.
Central America was overwhelmed by the California Gold Rush when it sank in the hurricane of 1857. Four hundred and twenty-five people drowned, and thousands of pounds of gold were lost, contributing to the economic panic.
Investors who backed Thompson’s project sued him in 2005, saying they had yet to receive any money from the sale of more than 500 gold bars and thousands of coins worth $50 million, just part of the ship’s spoils.
Thompson, who was living in Florida, was impeached and later became a fugitive when a federal judge in Ohio issued a warrant for his arrest in 2012 after he failed to appear in court.
Authorities tracked Thompson to a Florida hotel three years later. A judge then held him in contempt of court and sent Thompson to prison at the end of 2015 for refusing to answer questions about the location of the missing coins.
Thompson, now 73, confirmed that the coins – then worth $2.5 million – were delivered to a trust fund in Belize, and said the $50 million from the sale of the first batch of gold went mostly toward legal fees and bank loans.
He remained detained even though federal law generally limits prison sentences for contempt of court to 18 months. A federal appeals court in 2019 rejected Thompson’s argument that the law applied to him, saying his refusal violated the terms of his plea agreement.
The following year, Thompson appeared via video for another hearing where U.S. District Judge Algeneon Marbley asked him again if he was willing to determine the whereabouts of the gold.
“Your Honor,” Thompson replied, “I don’t know if we’ve been down this road before or not, but I don’t know where the gold is.” “I feel like I don’t have the keys to my freedom.”
Last February, Marbley agreed to end Thompson’s sentence for civil contempt, saying he was no longer convinced keeping him in prison would lead to an answer. The judge then ordered Thompson to immediately begin serving a two-year prison sentence Skip the 2012 court hearing.
Dwight Manley, a California coin dealer who bought and sold nearly the entire fortune, said Monday that Thompson had paid a high price for what he said amounted to a business dispute.
“Going to prison for 10 years over a business dispute is not right for America,” Manley said. “People kill people and get out in half the time.”