Tommy Thompson, who located the S.S. Central America treasure off the coast of South Carolina and spent more than a decade in prison after refusing to disclose information about missing gold coins, was released from prison Wednesday, federal records show.
Thompson, 73, was released last week, according to Bureau of Prisons records reviewed by The Associated Press.
The discovery that made Thompson famous began in 1988, when he located what was known as the Ship of Gold off the coast of South Carolina. The S.S. Central America, filled with gold from the California Gold Rush, sank in a hurricane in 1857; the sinking killed 425 people and left thousands of pounds of gold lost at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for more than 150 years, AP reported.
In later years, Thompson’s efforts to profit from salvaging treasure led to disputes. The AP reported that Thompson battled investors who accused him of cheating them out of millions and that he spent years on the run as a fugitive after refusing court-ordered steps while contending he did not know what happened to 500 coins minted from the ship’s gold.
The AP said the Central America treasure was connected to a $50 million sale involving more than 500 gold bars and thousands of coins, and that investors sued Thompson in 2005, saying they had yet to receive money from the transaction.
Thompson later faced an arrest warrant. The AP reported that after he was living in Florida, an Ohio federal judge issued a warrant for his arrest in 2012 when he failed to show up in court, and that authorities tracked Thompson to a Florida hotel three years later. A judge held him in contempt and sent him to prison at the end of 2015 after he refused to answer questions about the location of the missing coins.
While he remained incarcerated, Thompson argued that he did not know what happened to the 500 coins. According to the AP, Thompson maintained that the coins 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.
The AP reported that Thompson remained in prison even though federal law generally limits jail time for civil contempt to 18 months. In 2019, a federal appeals court rejected Thompson’s argument that the 18-month limit applied to him, saying his refusal violated conditions of a plea agreement.
The AP also reported that the following year Thompson appeared by video for another hearing where U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley again asked whether he was ready to address the whereabouts of the gold. During that hearing, Thompson said, “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,” and added, “I feel like I don’t have the keys to my freedom.”
Just over a year before his release, Marbley agreed to end Thompson’s sentence on the civil contempt charge, according to the AP. The AP reported that the judge said he was no longer convinced that keeping Thompson in prison would produce an answer, and that Marbley ordered Thompson to immediately begin serving a two-year sentence for skipping the 2012 court hearing.
After Thompson’s release, Dwight Manley, a California coin dealer who the AP said bought and sold nearly the entire fortune, criticized the length of Thompson’s imprisonment and said Thompson paid a heavy price for a dispute Manley described as business-related. Manley said, “Going to prison for 10 years over a business dispute is not America,” and also added, “People kill people and get out in half the time.”
Ryan Scott, a University of Florida law professor who researches contempt law and worked to secure Thompson’s release, also questioned the length of the confinement, telling AP that prolonged civil contempt is unusual. Scott said, “It’s very unusual to go on 10 years,” and said Thompson should have been freed years earlier, calling it a “miscarriage of justice for this to have gone on this long.”