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Treasure hunter freed from jail after refusing to turn over shipwreck gold
- AreShoesFeet000 7mo agoThis is interesting. They really can’t keep you locked forever.
- Barbing 7mo ago>released from prison after a decade >Tommy Thompson, 73 No not _forever_ :)
- MBCook 7mo agoThis link said that his contempt violated a plea agreement and that’s why they were able to hold him longer than the standard limit of 18 months. https://apnews.com/article/tommy-thompson-gold-coins-shipwreck-09ef5b7377e6417ce70f8c2ddcccf534 https://apnews.com/article/tommy-thompson-gold-coins-shipwre...
- dwedge 7mo agoWhich is such bull. His guilty plea was about missing a hearing, and they kept him indefinitely on another accusation
- gnabgib 7mo agoPreviously (4+6 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47329627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47329627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47372912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47372912 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923251
- bfivyvysj 7mo agoSo just need to wait them out eh.
- shablulman 7mo ago[dead]
- bombcar 7mo agoInteresting that they stayed in Florida instead of absconding with the coins to where they'd be out of reach.
- SilverElfin 7mo agoIs there any obligation to turn over treasure you find yourself? And why?
- wahern 7mo agoThere is when you take $12 million from investors: > A total of 161 investors had given Thompson $12.7m (£9.4m) to find the ship on the understanding that they would see returns on their investment. Both the criminal and civil contempt arose from his refusal to abide court orders from the civil suit.[1] [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/treasure-hunter-sentenced-criminal-contempt https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/treasure-hunter-sentenc...
- tehlike 7mo ago[flagged]
- laborcontract 7mo agoPresumably everyone could have asked chatgpt.
- buzzerbetrayed 7mo agoJust like how everyone could have googled it. What’s your point?
- Dylan16807 7mo agoTheir point is that quoting chatgpt is a bad comment. What's your point? It would be just as bad for someone to google a question and copy the first result snippet verbatim. So you've successfully brought up another bad way to comment.
- manarth 7mo agoI'm a scuba-diver and qualified marine archaelogist with a long-standing interest in archaeology and history. I used Google to find suitable lay-descriptions/citations for the topics I already knew about (UK law on treasure and maritime law on salvage), and to understand more about applicable laws in the USA.
- ojbyrne 7mo ago“Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea” is a book about the treasure hunt, recommended.
- rgovostes 7mo agoIt 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."
- aed 7mo agoI was about to come recommend this book! I picked it up at a book sale without knowing the story. It is fantastic.
- jgalt212 7mo agoIt 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.
- Refreeze5224 7mo agoThe 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.
- Analemma_ 7mo agoHow 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.
- awesome_dude 7mo ago> 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. It is if you don't have the item(s) or knowledge being asked for.
- Analemma_ 7mo ago> Thompson was held in contempt for refusing to answer questions about the location of about 500 missing gold coins You can claim “I forgot” in response to questioning, and the judge will decide on the balance of evidence whether you appear to be telling the truth. Contra the panicky memes about contempt of court, people aren’t indefinitely detained because they forgot something. But that’s clearly not what happened here.
- FpUser 7mo ago>"the balance of evidence " Do not make me laugh. What evidence? Persons can and do forget most obvious things.
- 7mo ago
- consumer451 7mo agoThe last time I saw this story, I learned that he was actually jailed for defrauding investors. Was that not the case? If it is, is the BBC in the unavoidable click-bait game now?
- adi_kurian 7mo agoYes mate insane clickbait. 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."
- consumer451 7mo agoMan, this is why people with enough "karma" have flagging abilities on this website. Please use it on this story. Pure garbage.
- Dylan16807 7mo ago> The last time I saw this story, I learned that he was actually jailed for defrauding investors. Was that not the case? > Please use it on this story. Pure garbage. The third sentence of the story is "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." You could call the title clickbait, I guess? (It seems reasonable enough to me.) But I don't understand your objection to the story itself. It makes it clear that the case was about defrauding investors.
- consumer451 7mo agoFair. My objection may be founded in other framings of this story where it was implied that "spunky explorer did not tell the big bad goverment where the gold was, so they put him in jail." Honestly, the headline does seem to imply that, no?
- sooheon 7mo agoWonder why he was only charged with contempt, rather than defrauding investors?
- VSerge 7mo ago^this. The person described here appears like a crook who pocketed millions and stiffed investors, so why just a contempt charge? In any case, probably not a romantic explorer figure as the clickbaity title suggests.
- danielheath 7mo agoIf a judge says you're in contempt, you'll get charged with contempt immediately - all the people required are present. 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.
- arjie 7mo agoJesus, what a tale > 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.
- bowmessage 7mo agoThe thing about gold is, it’s probably quite easy to secretly leave to your heirs.
- arjie 7mo agoYes, I think so too. It's the only worthwhile reason to commit this crime, surely. You'd be relying on the claimants abandoning their claim at some point because surely the statute of limitations doesn't just apply because you were particularly good at hiding something. Realistically, they'd have to sell this to a collector many years later for much less than what they're worth (since they can't be sold on with proper provenance tracking). It doesn't even seem worth it since the original investors wanted a fraction of the proceeds not all of it. Just seems like a strange choice, but I suppose that's why I'm not an intrepid underwater gold adventurer and this guy is.
- MBCook 7mo agoI 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.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- olalonde 7mo agoSpending 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....
- lukan 7mo agoAt what age do you believe, 10 years in jail are a better price to pay?
- olalonde 7mo agoYounger. The opportunity cost of time scales non-linearly with age. If you're old enough, 10 years can be a life sentence.
- CrossVR 7mo agoIf I were asked to give up 10 years of my life I would rather choose to give up the final 10 years than 10 years in the prime of my life.
- Dylan16807 7mo agoIf you ask people that would still have 25+ years of life after they're freed, I bet a lot of them would willingly take that trade.
- jongjong 7mo agoThey probably released him because they don't want the secret to die with him and also they probably want to track him via satellite.
- gethly 7mo agoFrom what i have read, he is mostly guilty of defrauding his investors.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Razengan 7mo agoThis is Thorin having to give away the Lonely Mountain treasure after Smaug's death all over again
- White_Wolf 7mo agoI'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.
- latexr 7mo agoMaybe ask your wife and kids first. Chances are they would rather not make that trade (and if they did, then you shouldn’t).
- raziefx 7mo ago[dead]
- jimnotgym 7mo agoHow 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.
- ahoka 7mo agoHow do you sell it?
- y-curious 7mo agoMelt it down and sell at spot price would be my guess
- jimnotgym 7mo agoWell you use your real share to generate a complex series of investments to make it very hard to judge your wealth. In it you begin trading gold legitimately, not gold markets but buying and selling real gold. The stuff off the boat gets mixed in over the years. Buy some shipwreck gold! Collect gold coins personally! Buy and sell collectables Melt some down, have it remade into other things, and it gains a bit of weight here and there.
- AngryData 7mo agoI mean it is pretty easy to sell gold, especially if you sell it below spot price or melt it. If someone offered me gold at a 10% discount, I would immediately buy it and go sell it at whatever gold dealer for an easy profit. Im sure most gold dealers would do the same thing even if it was obviously stolen spanish gold or something. If you wanted some sort of legal paper trail to fall back on you can spend a bit of money on a few machines and rights to a gold claim in Alaska, dig some random holes for a few months, then claim you struck it rich.
- conductr 7mo agoIf you’re unsuspecting and the investors get enough return, then it’s really not to hard as no one is going to be watching you or have any reason or ability to audit your finances. I’d say it’s almost expected that someone in that position would skim off the top in this way. The problem is he stole it all and that’s obviously going to raise questions.
- JoeAltmaier 7mo agoI'm surprised he spent a day in jail. People with big money generally have far less trouble with the law, than that.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- tgtweak 7mo agoInteresting 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.
- bojangleslover 7mo agoHe'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.
- throwa356262 7mo agoI am surprised he survived jail. Inmates would start threatening and exporting him as soon as they learned of this and might even continue after he is out.
- nullorempty 7mo agoThe 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.