Treasure Hunter Tommy Thompson Released After Decade

Tommy Thompson, the treasure hunter who discovered the S.S. Central America — known as the Ship of Gold — off the coast of South Carolina in 1988, has been released from prison after serving a decade behind bars. According to federal Bureau of Prisons records, Thompson was freed last Wednesday.

Thompson, an Ohio-born research scientist, was initially hailed as a hero for finding the shipwreck and its thousands of pounds of sunken treasure that had been lost at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for over 150 years. The S.S. Central America sank in September 1857 during a hurricane, taking with it 425 passengers and crew members and approximately 30,000 pounds of federal gold from the new San Francisco Mint.

However, Thompson's triumph turned into legal troubles as he battled with investors who accused him of cheating them out of millions. He spent years on the run before being sent to prison for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of 500 missing coins minted from the ship's gold.

Investors backed Thompson's venture and sued him in 2005, claiming they had not received any money from the $50 million sale of over 500 gold bars and thousands of coins. Thompson maintained that the coins were turned over to a trust in Belize and that the $50 million mostly went toward legal fees and bank loans.

Thompson's legal troubles began when he failed to appear in court in 2012, leading to an arrest warrant issued by an Ohio federal judge. Authorities tracked him down three years later at a Florida hotel where he was living under a fake name. The judge held him in contempt and sentenced him to prison for refusing to answer questions about the missing coins.

Despite federal law generally limiting jail time for contempt of court to 18 months, Thompson remained incarcerated due to his refusal to disclose the location of the gold. A federal appeals court rejected his argument that the law applied to him in 2019, stating that his refusal violated conditions of a plea agreement.

The following year, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley asked Thompson during a video hearing if he was ready to address the whereabouts of the gold. Thompson responded, "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, Marbley agreed to end Thompson's sentence on the civil contempt charge, stating that he was no longer convinced that keeping him in prison would produce an answer. The judge then ordered Thompson to immediately start serving a two-year sentence for skipping the 2012 court hearing.

Dwight Manley, a California coin dealer who bought and sold nearly the entire fortune, described Thompson's decade-long imprisonment as "not America," stating that people convicted of more serious crimes often serve less time. Ryan Scott, a University of Florida law professor who researched contempt law and worked to secure Thompson's release, called it a miscarriage of justice for the case to have gone on this long.