Prisoner holds the secret to the greatest treasure in American history

Having found three tons of gold on the wreckage of a ship, Thompson refused to reveal where it was hidden, even though he was being held in an American prison with a huge fine.

Thompson with some of the gold recovered from the shipwreck. Photo: WP

Tommy G. Thompson is one of America's most famous treasure hunters, after finding a treasure trove of gold in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1988, according to the Washington Post.

The SS Central America, carrying 425 people and at least three tons of California gold, sank in a storm off the coast of South Carolina in 1857. Since then, many people have searched for the wreckage of the gold-laden ship, but to no avail.

130 years later, Thompson, a young engineer from Columbus, Ohio, built a diving robot named "Nemo" to search for the exact location of the Central America, then dived to the bottom of the sea 2,400 meters deep to recover the treasure.

To carry out this ambitious treasure hunt project, Thompson raised capital from more than 160 investors. He spent years researching the details of the ill-fated ship's journey, and developing robotic diving technology to reach depths no one had ever reached before.

Thompson's team recovered 19th-century gold coins, the ship's bell, and gold bars 15 times larger than the largest known California gold bar, the Chicago Tribune reported in 1989.

The assets announced represent only 5% of the gold in this huge treasure worth about $400 million, the Washington Post reported a year later. "It is the largest treasure in American history and the most ambitious seabed salvage effort ever undertaken anywhere in the world," the newspaper commented.

Thompson's efforts attracted the attention of the whole United States, making the engineer who had researched nuclear submarine systems before hunting for this treasure famous. "Thompson is not the romantic, adventurous type, he works very scientifically and systematically," Forbes commented.

Despite his national fame, Thompson rarely spoke in public, always trying to downplay his role in the discovery of the huge treasure.

Wanted

Gold coins and gold bars discovered on the wreck of the Central America. Photo: WP

But a few years later, accused of defrauding investors who invested money in a treasure hunt, Thompson became one of the most wanted people by the US Marshals Service.

Two of the biggest investors in the treasure hunt decided to sue Thompson in the 2000s, accusing him of hiding and secretly selling almost all of the gold recovered on the ship for personal use.

A federal judge heard the case and subpoenaed Thompson to appear in court in 2012, but he failed to appear. An arrest warrant was issued, but the famed treasure hunter disappeared.

During the next two years, the U.S. Marshals Service launched a frantic manhunt to capture "one of the most wanted suspects" in the agency's history.

Peter Tobin, a US Marshal, admitted that Thompson "had unlimited resources and was 10 years ahead of the authorities" in the hunt.

Thompson and his girlfriend had been living comfortably for years in a Florida mansion, despite being wanted by authorities, paying rent with damp, worn bills they buried underground. By the time police discovered the house, the couple had left.

Searching the house, police found several cell phones, sealed bills with a value of $10,000, and a book on how to escape from wanted forces titled "How to Become Invisible".

Thompson was finally arrested last January, after agents tracked down $200 his girlfriend spent to pay for a night at a hotel near West Palm Beach.

In a statement after the arrest, the U.S. Marshals Service said with glee that they had used “every resource and intelligence” to search for Thompson. But nearly two years later, they have still not found the treasure.

The treasure disappeared for the second time

US authorities believe Thompson is hiding 95% of the gold found on the ship. Photo: TCPalm

After his arrest, Thompson was sent to a prison in Ohio, where the US authorities tried to get him to reveal the location of the gold recovered from the Central America. But despite threats, persuasion, and a huge daily fine, Thompson refused to say a word about the location of the gold.

Thompson's investors, who had hoped to make tens of millions of dollars from the treasure, believe he hid hundreds of gold coins in a secret trust account for his children.

At first, the search for the gold seemed promising. Thompson admitted to concealing the treasure in court in April 2015, saying the gold was hidden in Belize and agreeing to reveal its exact location. But he later changed his mind and refused to reveal where the gold was hidden.

Thompson's lawyer said last month that his client could not remember who was entrusted with the gold, even after combing through thousands of pages of documents related to the treasure.

A federal judge ruled that Thompson had deliberately fabricated the information and sentenced him to a year in prison. Thompson will not be released until he reveals the location of the treasure, and will be fined $1,000 for each day he remains silent.

But so far, these measures have not worked. "Maybe someday he will remember," Judge Algenon Marbley commented on December 12, when he ordered Thompson to answer questions about the whereabouts of the gold.

To this day, the gold on the Central America remains a treasure lost twice in two centuries, and the only person who knows how to find it remains silent, like the sailors left behind with the old shipwreck.

According to VNE