This May, hundreds of artifacts salvaged from the “Golden Ship” sunk at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean were put on display for the first time, while the person who discovered this treasure has been behind bars for 6 years and has not know when to be released…
According to USA Today, each artifact of the Golden Ship is worth from several hundred thousand USD to more than 1 million USD. From May to September, the artifacts will be displayed in at least six states: California, Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut and New York, before being auctioned in the fall.
Meanwhile, Mr. Tommy Thompson, a deep-sea explorer who found the wreckage of the Golden Ship in 1988, remains in prison and can only be released from a federal prison in Michigan if he reveals his whereabouts. 500 gold coins (worth about 2 million USD).
At the age of 70, Mr. Thompson is still being detained by the court and fined $1,000 a day for not answering questions about 500 gold coins. So far, Mr. Thompson has been fined $2 million and there is no sign that he is about to be released.
“I feel like I don’t have the key to my freedom,” Mr. Thompson said at a hearing in 2020, adding that he told the government everything he knew.
Mr. Thompson is one of the most successful treasure hunters in America. In 1988, he and his team discovered the SS Central America, also known as the Golden Ship.
This ship anchored from Panama’s Colon port on September 3, 1857, heading to New York City. At that time, the gold fever in the US was at its peak, causing many passengers to carry many gold bars in their luggage to take back home.
The total luggage of train passengers contains no less than 3 tons of gold. It was reported that the ship was secretly carrying 15 tons of gold to finance the army. All confidential documents about these goods were destroyed by a fire caused by an earthquake in San Francisco.
The gold ship sank in 1857 off the coast of Carolina. 425 people were killed and debris still lies 2,134 meters below sea level.
Soon after Mr. Thompson announced his momentous discovery of the Golden Ship, a group of insurance companies scrambled to claim the treasures, with no evidence they had insured them.
A “battle” in court ensued.
In 2000, Mr. Thompson’s company sold 532 gold bars and thousands of coins to California Gold Marketing Group for about $50 million. Much of that money went toward legal fees and bank loans, Thompson said.
Meanwhile, the group of investors who paid millions of dollars to fund Mr. Thompson’s dream of finding the ship never turned a profit. In 2005, they sued Mr. Thompson, who was living in seclusion in Florida. In 2012, he became a fugitive after an Ohio judge issued an arrest warrant for him.
He was arrested in 2015 with more than $425,000 in cash confiscated.
Mr. Thompson was unable to answer questions about the fate of 500 gold coins on the ship at many court hearings. He said he could not remember where these gold coins had drifted to and asserted that he could not trace them. He has filed many petitions to be released from prison.
No further hearings have been scheduled and Mr. Thompson’s most recent filing was for more time to hire an attorney.
