COLUMBUS, Ohio — A former treasure hunter who has spent almost ten years in prison for not revealing the location of lost gold coins has had his jail sentence terminated by a federal judge in Ohio, though he will remain incarcerated for now.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley decided to conclude Tommy Thompson’s sentence related to civil contempt, declaring that he “no longer is convinced that further incarceration is likely to coerce compliance.” However, the judge also mandated that Thompson begin serving a two-year sentence linked to a separate criminal contempt charge, which had been put on hold during his civil contempt imprisonment.
Thompson has been in contempt of court since December 15, 2015, during which he has accrued a daily penalty of $1,000. In his recent decision, Judge Marbley calculated Thompson’s total fine for civil contempt to be $3,335,000.
Thompson’s legal troubles trace back to his 1988 discovery of the S.S. Central America, often referred to as the Ship of Gold. This gold-laden vessel sank during a hurricane off the coast of South Carolina in 1857, carrying with it vast amounts of gold and triggering a financial panic.
Despite lawsuits from investors and a federal court order, Thompson has repeatedly refused to assist in the recovery efforts to locate 500 coins minted from the recovered gold, per court documents. He has previously claimed that the coins, valued at approximately $2.5 million, were entrusted to a trust located in Belize, though he hasn’t provided any specifics to substantiate this assertion.
Thompson’s legal troubles intensified when he failed to attend a court hearing in 2012 in Ohio regarding the coins. U.S. marshals eventually located and arrested him in Florida in 2015. He subsequently pleaded guilty in April 2015 for missing that hearing and was sentenced to two years in prison.
While federal regulations typically limit incarceration for contempt to 18 months, a federal appeals court denied Thompson’s argument to apply this law to his scenario in 2019, ruling that his non-compliance violated the terms of a plea agreement he had previously accepted.
