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Notorious Treasure Hunter Tommy Thompson Freed After Decade-Long Imprisonment
COLUMBUS, OH – After nearly a decade behind bars for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of missing gold coins from one of America’s most legendary shipwrecks, deep-sea treasure hunter Tommy Thompson has been released from federal custody. Thompson, 73, was freed last Wednesday, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records.
Thompson, an Ohio-born research scientist, rocketed to fame in 1988 after discovering the S.S. Central America off the coast of South Carolina.
Nicknamed the “Ship of Gold,” the vessel sank in a hurricane in September 1857, taking with it 425 passengers and crew, and an estimated 30,000 pounds of federal gold from the San Francisco Mint. Thompson and his team located the treasure more than 7,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic.
However, Thompson’s triumph soon turned to turmoil. He faced lawsuits from investors who accused him of defrauding them out of millions. He spent years as a fugitive before ultimately being arrested and imprisoned in 2015 for contempt of court, after consistently maintaining he didn’t know the location of 500 gold coins minted from the ship’s haul.
The S.S. Central America’s sinking, laden with riches from the California Gold Rush, contributed significantly to an economic panic in 1857. Investors who backed Thompson’s expedition sued him in 2005, claiming they had not received any proceeds from the reported $50 million sale of more than 500 gold bars and thousands of coins – a fraction of the ship’s total bounty.
Thompson initially went into seclusion in Florida before a 2012 warrant for his arrest was issued when he failed to appear in an Ohio federal court. Authorities apprehended him three years later at a Florida hotel, where he was living under an assumed name. He was subsequently held in contempt and incarcerated at the end of 2015 for his refusal to disclose information about the missing coins.
Throughout his imprisonment, Thompson insisted the coins, then valued at $2.5 million, had been entrusted to a Belize trust, and that the $50 million from the initial gold sale went primarily towards legal fees and bank loans. Despite federal law typically limiting civil contempt jail time to 18 months, Thompson’s detention continued, with a federal appeals court ruling in 2019 that his refusal violated the terms of a plea agreement.
In a 2020 video hearing, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley again pressed Thompson about the gold’s whereabouts.
Thompson reiterated, “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. I feel like I don’t have the keys to my freedom.”
Just over a year ago, Judge Marbley concluded that further imprisonment was unlikely to elicit an answer and ended Thompson’s civil contempt sentence. However, he then ordered Thompson to immediately begin serving a two-year sentence for failing to appear at the 2012 court hearing.
“People Kill People and Get Out in Half the Time”
Dwight Manley, a California coin dealer who was instrumental in buying and selling most of the recovered treasure, expressed his views on Thompson’s prolonged imprisonment. “Going to prison for 10 years over a business dispute is not America,” Manley stated, adding, “People kill people and get out in half the time.”
Ryan Scott, a University of Florida law professor specializing in contempt law who advocated for Thompson’s release, described the situation as “very unusual” and a “miscarriage of justice.” He argued that Thompson should have been freed years ago, particularly after the underlying case was dismissed in 2018.
The S.S. Central America’s recovered treasures have commanded millions at auction over the years.
In 2022, an 866.19-ounce Justh & Hunter gold ingot from the shipwreck sold for $2.16 million. In 2019, various relics brought in over $11 million, and in 2001, an 80-pound ingot fetched a record $8 million from a private collector.