He's an idiot. He pulled off one of the most incredible stunts I've ever seen. Not only does was he able to find and extract the gold over a mile down, which is incredible, he was also able to rally over 100 investors and raise capital. Ironically this is basically how capital markets originated, from shipping ventures not unlike this one.
He should have given the investors their money, taken his performance fee, and not spend up to half of his remaining lifespan (and probably around 3/4 of his remaining health span).
On the other hand, if he has grandkids and he manages to give them say 100mm instead of 20mm, he may feel it was worth it genetically.
Spending a decade in jail at age 60+ is a hell of a price to pay for a few millions. I'm tempted to believe he doesn't actually know where the coins are. If that's the case, he just spent 10+ years in a cage because a judge didn't believe him....
According to the article, the lawsuit said the coins were worth up to $400m. That's more than a "few" millions, it's $40m per year spent in jail. I think the bigger issue for him is that it will be very hard to launder all of that without getting caught.
10 years for refusing to to say where he found gold is wild. people who committed fraud against elderly people and child molesters often get sentenced for less than that.
Presuming he holds keys to vast wealth, the calculation would have shifted over time. Especially once he was serving his original sentence again starting a year ago.
Another consideration is that many go to jail longer with no upside once getting released.
Seems more like sunk cost fallacy, after 12 months in jail you could be unwilling to give up and tell where the treasure is, because then you would have spent a year in jail for nothing, and then it just gets worse and worse each passing year...
The real story here is that civil contempt can net you an indefinite prison sentence without a conviction, and if you're lucky a judge will decide to let you out. Over something you may or may not even know.
“Federal law generally limits jail time for contempt of court to 18 months. But a federal appeals court in 2019 rejected Thompson’s argument that that law applies to him, saying his refusal violated conditions of a plea agreement.”
How else could it possibly work? The justice system depends on judges being able to compel action. Within the guardrails established by the system (e.g. no self-incriminating testimony, if you’re in the US), I don’t have a problem with refusal to e.g. turn over evidence just resulting in detention until you comply. It’s not a prison sentence, since you can get out any time you want.
Seems sort of like he was held for as long as he'd have been held if he'd been judged guilty of stealing everything he was accused of stealing, and if he wanted to default himself into prison for that stretch without a trial, the judge was content to oblige him.
How did he get in this mess? I reckon a complete moron could have stolen 10% of the gold without getting caught. Just count and log less than you found. Drop it overboard with a GPS pin on your way back to port. Get it next year.
It is a fantastic book. The author was a spectator for much of the treasure hunt. The adulation of Thompson is amusing in light of the fact that, 15 years after publication, he was arrested for defrauding his investors.
Thompson himself published a coffee table book about the find, "America's Lost Treasure."
It is a very good book, but the author is enamored with Tommy Thompson. It's a borderline hagiography. And then when you do some independent reading about Tommy, you sort of question the researching skills of the author, Gary Kinder.
> Investors in Thompson's venture accused him of cheating them out of promised proceeds and after years on the run he was jailed in 2015 on a criminal contempt charge.
> They had been staying in a hotel for two years, paying cash for their room under a false name and using taxis and public transport to avoid detection.
But unless he plans on leaving secret wealth to his children, it scarcely sounds like a win even if he did actually get the $400 million. The investors are likely to watch him closely post-release for any actual accessing of the money. But even otherwise, what a life. Even if you have the $400 m worth of money somewhere, you're still living for years out of a hotel in Boca Raton, FL only going places via taxi and public transport while trying not to leave a paper trail. Then you're in jail for 10 years.
I suppose he can live out his seventies and later, but damn.
I wonder if there is a statute of limitations on suing an estate.
Let’s say he dies in 5 years. 10 years later his children suddenly clearly become rich and can’t explain how.
Clearly it looks like he passed the gold to them somehow.
Could the investors then somehow sue his estate then to get the value of the gold back? Or would it be too late?
For all we know he stole money, but not what they thought. Maybe after his time in hiding there’s only a few thousand left and it’s all largely moot anyway.
He’d be more sympathetic if he hadn’t been hiding and suspiciously paying cash for everything for years.
The rest of the gold was actually recovered after he was originally sued - the downstream owners of the original insurance company that paid out (they get the rights to the recovery when they settle a loss policy) sued and won rights to the gold - they then hired a larger recovery company that successfully recovered the 95% that was left. Kind of crazy that this guy didn't recover more than 5% and shot himself in the foot by trying to steal $2.5M of coins.
"Investors in Thompson's venture accused him of cheating them out of promised proceeds and after years on the run he was jailed in 2015 on a criminal contempt charge.
But last year, the judge agreed to end Thompson's civil contempt sentence, arguing that he was unlikely to ever offer an answer, according to CBS News."
Interesting that he really only took about $50M on that original haul - I'm still not entirely sure where that $50M would have went honestly since it doesn't look reasonable that he could have accrued $50M of debt/interest in an operation like that. Probably a good chunk of that was siphoned off and sitting in some offshores.
>In 2014, a secondary recovery operation was launched by Odyssey Marine Exploration under court supervision to get the rest of the treasure Thompson left behind.
Chief Judge Rebecca Beach Smith issued a ruling in August 2016 awarding the title of the newly recovered items to the salvors (of the original insurance company that paid out for the wreck). Operational reports and inventories were officially filed with the court.
The court inventory for this second trip alone included 15,500 gold and silver coins, 45 gold bars, gold dust, and hundreds of 19th-century artifacts. This included a glass-plate photograph of a woman dubbed the "Mona Lisa of the Deep" and what is believed to be the world's oldest known pair of miner's work jeans.
But also amusingly Deep-sea treasure hunter jailed for 10 years scores legal win but won't be freed (10 points, 1 year ago, 2 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923251
I'd do 10 years even for 20 mil if that is what it takes to make sure my 2 kids and my wife are set.
I won't be able to earn that much in a decade anyway.
The reason he was released is because they were getting close to never finding out where the gold is. Now, they have a chance of him leading them to it.
[+] [-] bojangleslover|13 days ago|reply
He should have given the investors their money, taken his performance fee, and not spend up to half of his remaining lifespan (and probably around 3/4 of his remaining health span).
On the other hand, if he has grandkids and he manages to give them say 100mm instead of 20mm, he may feel it was worth it genetically.
[+] [-] throwa356262|13 days ago|reply
Inmates would start threatening and exporting him as soon as they learned of this and might even continue after he is out.
[+] [-] olalonde|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] jbstack|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] cultofmetatron|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] lukan|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] bredren|13 days ago|reply
Presuming he holds keys to vast wealth, the calculation would have shifted over time. Especially once he was serving his original sentence again starting a year ago.
Another consideration is that many go to jail longer with no upside once getting released.
[+] [-] pingou|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] vaginaphobic|13 days ago|reply
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[+] [-] Refreeze5224|14 days ago|reply
[+] [-] MBCook|13 days ago|reply
https://apnews.com/article/tommy-thompson-gold-coins-shipwre...
[+] [-] Analemma_|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] refurb|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] jimnotgym|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] balderdash|13 days ago|reply
To your other point it wouldn’t be too hard to sell 10% of the gold to dealers with the proceeds /paperwork unaccounted for / off the books.
[+] [-] ahoka|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] sooheon|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] danielheath|13 days ago|reply
To charge him with defrauding investors requires a whole different group of people to get involved.
Additionally, those people need enough evidence to have a chance of conviction. "He refused to answer questions about it" is not actually evidence.
[+] [-] VSerge|13 days ago|reply
In any case, probably not a romantic explorer figure as the clickbaity title suggests.
[+] [-] ojbyrne|14 days ago|reply
[+] [-] rgovostes|13 days ago|reply
Thompson himself published a coffee table book about the find, "America's Lost Treasure."
[+] [-] jgalt212|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] aed|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] arjie|13 days ago|reply
> Investors in Thompson's venture accused him of cheating them out of promised proceeds and after years on the run he was jailed in 2015 on a criminal contempt charge.
> They had been staying in a hotel for two years, paying cash for their room under a false name and using taxis and public transport to avoid detection.
But unless he plans on leaving secret wealth to his children, it scarcely sounds like a win even if he did actually get the $400 million. The investors are likely to watch him closely post-release for any actual accessing of the money. But even otherwise, what a life. Even if you have the $400 m worth of money somewhere, you're still living for years out of a hotel in Boca Raton, FL only going places via taxi and public transport while trying not to leave a paper trail. Then you're in jail for 10 years.
I suppose he can live out his seventies and later, but damn.
[+] [-] MBCook|13 days ago|reply
Let’s say he dies in 5 years. 10 years later his children suddenly clearly become rich and can’t explain how. Clearly it looks like he passed the gold to them somehow.
Could the investors then somehow sue his estate then to get the value of the gold back? Or would it be too late?
For all we know he stole money, but not what they thought. Maybe after his time in hiding there’s only a few thousand left and it’s all largely moot anyway.
He’d be more sympathetic if he hadn’t been hiding and suspiciously paying cash for everything for years.
[+] [-] TurdF3rguson|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] tgtweak|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] bowmessage|13 days ago|reply
[+] [-] consumer451|13 days ago|reply
Was that not the case? If it is, is the BBC in the unavoidable click-bait game now?
[+] [-] adi_kurian|13 days ago|reply
Look at these passages:
"Investors in Thompson's venture accused him of cheating them out of promised proceeds and after years on the run he was jailed in 2015 on a criminal contempt charge.
But last year, the judge agreed to end Thompson's civil contempt sentence, arguing that he was unlikely to ever offer an answer, according to CBS News."
[+] [-] tgtweak|13 days ago|reply
>In 2014, a secondary recovery operation was launched by Odyssey Marine Exploration under court supervision to get the rest of the treasure Thompson left behind.
Chief Judge Rebecca Beach Smith issued a ruling in August 2016 awarding the title of the newly recovered items to the salvors (of the original insurance company that paid out for the wreck). Operational reports and inventories were officially filed with the court.
The court inventory for this second trip alone included 15,500 gold and silver coins, 45 gold bars, gold dust, and hundreds of 19th-century artifacts. This included a glass-plate photograph of a woman dubbed the "Mona Lisa of the Deep" and what is believed to be the world's oldest known pair of miner's work jeans.
[+] [-] unknown|13 days ago|reply
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[+] [-] gnabgib|14 days ago|reply
But also amusingly Deep-sea treasure hunter jailed for 10 years scores legal win but won't be freed (10 points, 1 year ago, 2 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923251
[+] [-] jongjong|13 days ago|reply
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