00:00A former deep-sea treasure hunter who made one of the greatest shipwreck discoveries in history
00:06is out of jail. Tommy Thompson was locked away for refusing to divulge the location
00:11of part of the treasure that he found. Because finders keepers, obviously. Now Thompson managed
00:17to locate what is known as the Ship of Gold off the coast of South Carolina back in 1988.
00:22The ship actually sank during a hurricane in 1857 and with it 30,000 pounds of federal gold from the
00:29San Francisco Mint. This wasn't a simple stroke of amazing luck though. Thompson's search for the
00:34treasure was bankrolled by investors and they sued him in 2005 for never turning over the booty from
00:39the $50 million sale of gold bars and thousands of coins found in the wreck. And that right there was
00:46just part of the full treasure, mind you. The rest is who knows where. Well, actually one person might
00:51know. Tommy allegedly held on to an additional 500 gold coins. Now he went into hiding and then became
00:58a fugitive before finally being nabbed at a Florida hotel in 2015. He maintained that all the money had
01:04been turned over to a trust in Belize. Nothing shady about that. And the $50 million from that first
01:11batch of gold went to legal fees and bank loans. The whole time, he has refused to reveal the location
01:18of the gold, claiming he didn't know. So he was held in contempt of court and jailed for 10 years.
01:24An insane amount of time for contempt of court. Now Thompson is a free man and the gold remains
01:30in the wind. He might want to go back into hiding since I am sure many private eyes will be
01:34on a
01:35treasure hunt of their own now.
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