Man In Jail For Incident Which Happened 166 Years Ago

A 70-year-old man is imprisoned at the moment for a crime connected to a discovery made more than 150 years ago.

A hurricane caused the SS Central America, also known as the "Ship of Gold," to sink off the shore of South Carolina in 1857.

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Thomas 'Tommy' Gregory Thompson, a research scientist, led a crew in 1988 in an effort to find the sunken ship and recover its treasures more than ten years later.

In order to fund his plans to reclaim the ten tonnes of gold from the California Gold Rush that descended with the ship, the research scientist persuaded '171 individuals and businesses to chip in $12.7 million (£10.7 million) to fund his plans,' according to The Columbus Dispatch.

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On September 11, 1988, Thompson "surprisingly quickly" found the wreck using an underwater robot he constructed called Nemo and a boat called the Arctic Discoverer.

Thompson reportedly didn't obtain legal permission to pursue it until 2003, according to the Tampa Bay Times, though this isn't the reason he's still in jail today.

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Thompson was a little reluctant to give it up after discovering gold, which is estimated to be worth about $300 million (£250 million) today.

Thompson sold the majority of the bars and coins he brought up from the depths of the sea to a marketing group, who paid him over $50 million (£42 million) in 2000, instead of giving any profits to the 161 investors who financed his expedition.

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Alison Antekeier, Thompson's aide, fled the country in 2012 after being sued by some of the investors.

A civil contempt warrant was issued in August 2012 because the study scientist missed one of the court proceedings. A warrant for criminal contempt was issued by the spring of the following year.

Thompson and his partner were finally located in West Boca Raton in 2015, cozy up in a Hilton hotel, despite living on cash and avoiding authorities for an impressive couple of years.

Even though Thompson admitted to missing the 2012 hearing and received a two-year prison term as a result, he continues to be held in prison due to a contempt charge resulting from his refusal to reveal the location of the remaining gold coins on the ship.

Investors claim that although Thompson sold the majority of the gold, 500 coins remain missing. The government estimates that these missing coins are worth between $2 and $4 million (£1.7 and 3.4 million). The research scientist reportedly agreed to give up the last coins in November 2018, but he subsequently said he doesn't have access to them.

For his silence, Thompson is paying a daily fine of $1,000 (£850) and is currently owed over $2 million (£1.7 million). He is still in jail, and after spending the last six years there, it doesn't appear that he will be released any time soon.

In the year 2020, Thompson appeared in court and informed the judge that they suffer from short-term memory loss due to chronic fatigue syndrome: "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. I feel like I don’t have the keys to my freedom."

However, as federal judge Algenon Marbley stated in a hearing in 2017: "He creates a patent for a submarine, but he can’t remember where he put the loot."