Treasure Hunter Released from Prison: Ten Years For Contempt

Welcome once again to Lato's Law.

Here's Steve Lato.

Got another one of those stories sent to me by everybody.

And this is a follow-up to a video I did,

I think about five years ago.

I'll put a link to the previous video

in the description below this one.

Headline is from al.com, a treasure hunter who refused

to tell location of famed shipwrecks gold,

freed after decade in prison.

Kelly Kaseck wrote this,

the man who found one of the most famous shipwrecks

in American history has been released from prison

after serving 10 years behind bars

for refusing to say where part of the treasure is located.

His name is Tommy Thompson,

and he discovered the legendary ship of gold

off the coast of South Carolina in 1988.

And I remember the story very, very well.

This guy is a treasure hunter.

He had a hunch that he knew where the shipwreck was.

He got a bunch of investors together to put up the money

so that he could use high-tech equipment in the 1980s

and locate and then salvage this wreck.

So this, a lot of the information

that he has come from CBS News,

he was serving a sentence for contempt, though,

because the court says that he refused to tell investors

in the treasure hunt where an unaccounted

for 500 gold bars and thousands of coins were located.

So recovering a stuff off the wreck,

they're all kinds of gold bars and coins, et cetera, et cetera.

And some of them were accounted for.

I've seen at coin shows, coins that were in containers

indicating they came from the shipwreck.

And so if you had a gold coin from this shipwreck,

it's actually worth a little more

in a typical gold coin that was just a gold coin.

So Thompson discovered the SS Central America,

which contained thousands of pounds of sunken treasure

according to CBS News.

The Central America sank in 1857

with his cargo of 30,000 pounds of federal gold

from the San Francisco Mint,

the ship's 425 passengers and crew went down with the ship.

And believe it or not, in 1857,

when that much gold got lost,

they say it actually affected the economy.

I mean, it was such a financial catastrophe.

So there were investors who put up the money

for this man to go look for that

and recover that ship, the cargo from it.

And those people have accused him

of cheating him out of millions.

Despite court orders, the man refused to say

where the stuff was, and he says that now

he doesn't know where it is.

So he was jailed on contempt charges and held for 10 years.

And at one point in time, the judge basically said,

look, until you tell us what that stuff is,

you're going to prison and you're going to sit there

until you change your mind.

And in the meantime, you're going to pay $1,000 per day

as a penalty, hoping that would encourage him

to change his mind.

The judge also at one point hit him

with a $3.3 million civil contempt fine,

which I'm guessing might be $1,000 a day

for 10 years roughly.

And then also a quarter of a million are fine

for criminal contempt.

But he still says he doesn't know where the stuff is.

In a video plea for his release, Thompson told the court,

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.

So the heart of this matter is a lawsuit filed

by the investors who say that they are entitled

to a share of what was recovered.

So they say they have not received the money

for all of the gold bars and thousands of coins.

And so I don't know exactly what the split was,

but the investors put up the money

and anything recovered, they were supposed

to get a share of.

There were several lawsuits filed

and somewhere in the later years,

he kind of disappeared, he kind of disappeared.

And he was eventually located in a hotel three years

after he disappeared.

And then when dragged back into court,

he wouldn't say where the stuff was

and he said he didn't know.

And the court didn't believe him

and the court held him in contempt

and sent to the jail and said, okay, $1,000 a day

till you tell us.

So reportedly, he is now saying

that the coins were given to a trust in Belize.

He also stated that $50 million was used

for legal expenses and bank loans

according to the associated press.

But again, the court didn't buy it.

And I know a lot of people, I got comments

with the notes saying Steve,

you should do a story and update on this video

referring to the video I did earlier.

And they go really 10 years for contempt of court.

So to fully understand what's going on,

you have to realize that there's more than one contempt charge.

So there was the original contempt charge

which the judge actually agreed to end last year

because the court said that it was no longer convinced

that further incarceration is likely to coerce compliance.

So the court released him from the civil contempt charge.

However, the court then ordered him

to immediately start serving a two year sentence.

He received for a related criminal contempt charge,

a term that was delayed when the civil contempt term was imposed.

So you have to understand this.

The civil contempt began back in 2015

when he refused to tell what was going on.

And that's when he was hit with $1,000 a day and so on.

However, there was a situation where he was told

to appear in 2012 for a hearing to discuss

the whereabouts of what they're fighting over here.

He didn't appear for that.

US Marshals eventually tracked him down in Florida in 2015.

And that was three years after he didn't show up.

And they arrested him.

He was then charged with contempt for skipping that hearing.

He pleaded guilty at that hearing and was given a two year prison sentence.

So two years of the time he spent in prison

was on a different contempt charge than the original contempt charge.

And he pled guilty to it.

Now, just so you know, federal law generally limits jail time

for contempt of court to 18 months.

But a federal appeals court rejected Thompson's argument

that that law applies to him in a situation

because the court says that the reason he was held in contempt

was because he refused to cooperate with a plea agreement.

So very, very complicated.

But it appears that somewhere along the line, he had said,

OK, I will cooperate and I'll work with you guys.

And that was entered into and made official.

And then when he refused to cooperate with that,

that became a different type of contempt,

a different form of contempt.

And simply him not testifying or not wanting to testify,

it was that he refused to do that, which he had agreed to do.

And in violation of that plea agreement,

they said was a different type of contempt

for which he could be punished.

So again, two different situations here,

the criminal contempt and the civil contempt.

And some of this is of his own doing

because he was supposed to show up in court

and he didn't.

And federal marshals had to track him down.

If this guy legitimately has no idea what happened to the gold,

I feel sorry for him spending 10 years in prison.

On the other hand, I'd also ask if you found 30,000 pounds

of gold and it included bars and coins,

you'd think that'd be memorable, wouldn't you?

So I would need to hear a really good explanation for it.

But don't forget now that he's been released from prison,

it doesn't mean he's getting off Scott free

because there is still the civil contempt

fine of 3.3 million dollars,

a criminal contempt fine for quarter of a million.

And I believe that the plaintiffs in the case against him,

I believe they have a judgment against him.

Now getting someone to pay a judgment

is very different than getting a judgment,

but they don't have to just kick back and go,

well, we gotta wait till he pays us.

They can chase him around a little bit,

but the question is, will he stick around to be chased?

So don't know what's gonna happen.

I have a sneaky feeling that this case is gonna disappear

because he very well could disappear.

But we'll see, we'll see.

But it's a wild case.

I remember when he found the wreck.

I remember the stories.

I remember seeing news articles and magazine articles

and reading all about it and seeing photographs

and there ain't nothing prettier than a photograph

shot in the depths of the ocean.

And you can see that as the silt and stuff is blown around

that there's a pile of gold coins in perfect condition.

And they've been sitting there since 1857

and haven't touched air in all that time.

And a lot of times they come up shiny and sparkly.

It's an amazing thing.

It's an amazing story.

So there you go.

The Treasure Hunter refused to tell the location

of the famed Shipwrecks gold.

He's been freed after a decade in prison,

Kelly, Kasek wrote that for al.com.

Questions and comments, put them below.

Let's talk to you later.

Bye-bye.

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