Treasure hunter walks free after refusing to reveal location of $50m shipwreck gold
Tommy Thompson, 73, ended up spending 10 years in jail because he refused to answer questions about “the greatest treasure in American history”, found on board the 1857 wreck of the SS Central America
A treasure hunter who refused to tell police where he sold a collection of gold coins found in a shipwreck off the US coast has finally been released from prison.
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Tommy Thompson, 73, ended up spending 10 years in jail because he refused to answer questions about “the greatest treasure in American history”, found on board the 1857 wreck of the SS Central America.
His silence cost him $1,000 (£755) a day and left him in prison far longer than the original two-year sentence.
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Thompson repeatedly claimed he was suffering from amnesia and his refusal to answer questions frustrated investors, who funded his trip to find gold on board the shipwreck.
He discovered the ship in 1988, five years after he began the multi-million dollar search for it, 160 miles off the coast of South Carolina and 8,000ft below the surface.
Thompson is accused of making about $50m from the sale of the gold bars and coins brought up from the ocean floor, while leaving nothing for those who funded his adventure.
Having spent years on the run, Thompson was jailed for contempt of court before finally walking free last week.
His claims of severe memory loss in 2016 were found to be false following a psychiatric evaluation.
The trained engineer had been searching for lost treasures since his early 20s and was known to be a "technical whizz".
He used his skills to build an unmanned submersible called Nemo, which had several computers and broadcast-quality cameras on board as well as thrusters and excavation tools.
Thompson then took his creation out into the sea while posting himself on an old icebreaker ship floating above.
After first relaying images of a giant rusty paddle wheel, the dust slowly settled to reveal a seabed "carpeted with gold".
The SS Central America, a wooden-hulled steamship heading to New York from Panama carrying 578 passengers, had sunk in 1857 after being battered by a hurricane.
It was filled with tons of gold prospected from California with a value of more than $2bn.
Those who were saved dumped the heavy gold coins into the water as they escaped in lifeboats.
Thompson used Nemo to help pull up two tons of gold bars and coins from the ocean floor in the years that followed.
He sold the majority of his bounty to dealers and collectors for a reported $50m, before disappearing when his backers sued him for their cut.
In 2012, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to appear in court.
Thompson was eventually tracked down three years later in Florida.
When officers and judges asked him to locate 500 gold coins from the shipwreck, he said he had no clue where they were.
He argued that he suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and was too ill to answer questions.
“This selective amnesia, it adds up to a lack of credibility,” the judge said, sentencing him to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Even though the case brought by his investors was dismissed in 2018, Thompson has spent the past decade in federal prison.
He was released last week after a judge decided that keeping him locked up any longer was unlikely to produce an answer.
The pensioner has maintained that some of the coins were handed over to a trust in Belize but that he had no further knowledge of their whereabouts.
He also claims the £50m he made was used to pay for his legal fees and bank loans.