Treasure hunter who claimed amnesia about gold haul is released from jail
Treasure hunter who claimed amnesia about gold haul is released from jail
Ben StocktonSun, March 15, 2026 at 6:57 PM UTC
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Tommy Thompson at the helm of the Arctic Explorer in 1991 - Doral Chenoweth III/AP
A treasure hunter who refused to tell police the location of gold coins he discovered in a shipwreck thousands of feet off the US coast has finally been released from prison.
Tommy Thompson spent 10 years in jail – far longer than his original sentence – after claiming he suffered from amnesia.
Despite a $1,000 (£755) fine for every day he refused to answer questions about the coins, he kept his counsel, leaving him in prison far beyond the typical 18-month limit for civil contempt.
Thompson claimed he suffered from amnesia
His silence frustrated investors who have long been waiting for a payout since giving him cash to find gold onboard the 1857 wreck of the SS Central America.
Thompson spent five years searching for the ship and in 1988 he finally found it, 160 miles off the coast of South Carolina and 8,000ft below the surface.
It had cost millions of dollars to get to this point.
Thompson is thought to have made about $50m from the sale of the gold bars and coins brought up from the ocean floor. But those who funded his adventure got nothing.
After going on the run for years he was jailed for contempt of court before finally walking free last week.
In 2016 Thompson claimed severe memory loss but a psychiatric evaluation found otherwise.
Gold bars taken from the SS Central America - 578 passengers/Getty Images
He had been searching for lost treasures since his early 20s. An engineer by training, he was known as a technical whizz who was always building or fixing something.
He built an unmanned submersible called Nemo, which had several computers and broadcast-quality cameras on board as well as thrusters and excavation tools.
Thompson discovered a ‘garden of gold’ on the ocean floor - Courtesy of the California Gold Marketing Group
Nemo first relayed images of a giant rusty paddle wheel to Thompson, who was posted on an old icebreaker ship floating above. Then, as the dust slowly settled on the seabed, he got a glimpse of the unimaginable bounty.
“The bottom was carpeted with gold. Gold everywhere, like a garden,” he later recalled.
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The SS Central America, a wooden-hulled steamship heading to New York from Panama, had sunk in 1857 after being battered by a hurricane.
A recovered $20 gold coin - Donn Pearlman/AP
As well as carrying 578 passengers, most of whom died, the ship was laden with tons of gold prospected from California with a value today of more than $2bn. Those who were saved dumped the heavy gold coins into the water as they escaped in lifeboats.
In the words of one dealer, Thompson had discovered “the greatest treasure in American history”. In the years following, with the help of Nemo, he pulled up two tons of gold bars and coins from the ocean floor.
He sold at least some of his haul to dealers and collectors for a reported $50m. But when his backers later sued him for their cut of the loot, he disappeared.
In 2012, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to appear in court. Authorities eventually tracked him down three years later in Florida. When he was asked to help locate 500 gold coins from the shipwreck, he said he had no clue where they were.
Thompson pulled up two tons of gold bars and coins - AP
“Where’s the loot?” an Ohio judge asked Thompson in 2015.
He argued that he suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and was too ill to answer questions.
“This selective amnesia, it adds up to a lack of credibility,” the judge said, sentencing him to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The SS Central America sank in 1857 killing most of the 578 passengers on board - Library of Congress/AP
Even though the case brought by his investors was dismissed in 2018, Thompson has spent the past decade in federal prison.
A little over a year ago, the judge decided that keeping him locked up any longer was unlikely to produce an answer and last week he was released.
Thompson, now 73 with his grey hair pulled into a ponytail, has maintained that some of the coins were handed over to a trust in Belize but that he had no further knowledge of their whereabouts. The $50m, he said, went towards legal fees and bank loans.
He remains under court supervision and reportedly owes $3.3m in fines.
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Source: “AOL General News”
