Treasure Hunter Who Found ‘Ship of Gold’ Goes Free..But the gold but found in 1988 remains unaccounted for

A deep-sea treasure hunter who made one of the most remarkable shipwreck discoveries in American history—and later spent more than a decade in jail for refusing to reveal the location of missing gold coins—has been released from prison, according to federal records.

Tommy Thompson, the research scientist who located the legendary SS Central America shipwreck in 1988 off the coast of South Carolina, was released last Wednesday, according to records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons reviewed by the Associated Press. Thompson, who was born in Ohio, gained national attention after discovering the wreck—often called the “Ship of Gold”—which held thousands of pounds of treasure that had rested on the Atlantic Ocean floor for more than 150 years.

In 2005, investors who had funded Thompson’s expedition filed a lawsuit claiming they had not received any profits from the roughly $50 million sale of more than 500 gold bars and thousands of coins recovered from the wreck—only a portion of the ship’s treasure.

Thompson later became a fugitive in 2012 after failing to appear in court when an Ohio federal judge issued a warrant for his arrest. Authorities eventually located him three years later at a hotel in Florida. After his capture, the judge held Thompson in contempt of court and ordered him jailed in late 2015 for refusing to answer questions about the location of the missing coins.

Now 73, Thompson had long insisted that the coins—then valued at about $2.5 million—were placed in a trust in Belize. He also claimed that most of the $50 million generated from the initial gold sales went toward legal expenses and bank loans.

Despite federal law generally limiting jail time for civil contempt to 18 months, Thompson remained imprisoned for years. In a later court hearing conducted by video, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley again asked whether he would disclose the coins’ location.

“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.”