Tommy Thompson refused to give up the location of 500 missing coins found in a historic shipwreck
A US treasure hunter who was imprisoned for 10 years after refusing to reveal the location of missing gold coins has been released from prison, without officials apparently ever learning where that gold is.
Tommy Thompson – a renowned salvager who in 1998 found the long-lost, so-called Ship of Gold near South Carolina – was freed from federal prison on 4 March, records and reports recently indicated.
The ship sailed under the name SS Central America before Thompson, now 73, found it with tons of “sunken treasure” inside, CBS News said.
The SS Central America was transporting more than 400 passengers and crew as well as 30,000lb of federally minted gold when it sank in 1857. Thompson and his team found the ship about 7,000ft below the surface, at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, as CBS News reported.
