A former deep-sea treasure hunter who made one of the great shipwreck discoveries in American history and spent more than a decade in jail after refusing to disclose the whereabouts of some of its missing gold coins is now out of prison, federal records show. Tommy Thompson, who in 1988 located what was known as the Ship of Gold off the coast of South Carolina, was released last Wednesday, according to federal Bureau of Prisons records reviewed by the AP. Thompson, an Ohio-born research scientist, was hailed as a hero after finding the SS Central America and its thousands of pounds of sunken treasure that had sat at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for more than 150 years.
Investors who backed Thompson's venture sued him in 2005, saying they had yet to receive any money from the $50 million sale of more than 500 gold bars and thousands of coins—just part of the ship's booty. Thompson later became a fugitive when an Ohio federal judge issued a warrant for his arrest in 2012 after he failed to show up in court. Authorities tracked Thompson to a Florida hotel three years later. The judge then held him in contempt 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, maintained that the coins—valued then at $2.5 million—were turned over to a trust in Belize and said the $50 million from the sale of the first batch of gold mostly went toward legal fees and bank loans. He remained locked up even though federal law generally limits jail time for contempt of court to 18 months. The following year, Thompson appeared by video for another hearing where US District Judge Algenon Marbley again asked whether he was ready to address the whereabouts of the gold. "Your honor, I don't know if we've gone over this road before or not, but I don't know the whereabouts of the gold," Thompson said. "I feel like I don't have the keys to my freedom."
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