The American found 3 tons of gold, but even in prison does not say where he hid

Фото: Depositphotos

Tommy Thompson became famous in 1988 year as the man who discovered and raised the largest treasure in US history.

An engineer from Ohio who worked on the development of various systems for nuclear submarines, while still a student, was interested in searching for sunken ships and vessels. The Washington Post.

He made his main target the steam vessel Central America - in 1857, it hit a storm off the coast of South Carolina. 425 man and cargo of California gold were killed along with the ship: coins and ingots with a total weight of about three tons.

At the end of the 1980-ies, Thompson found the treasure and disappeared.

American media then wrote about Tommy Thompson as a very rational treasure hunter.

“This is not a romantic and noble robber. His approach is scientific and methodical, without any adventurous nonsense, ”wrote Forbes magazine shortly after the treasure hunter reported on his find.

And this is very similar to the truth - Thompson approached the search for Central America with all possible thoroughness and tried to apply all the skills acquired on the job. Thompson spent several years in the archives trying to reconstruct the ship's final route; came up with a device that could descend to great depths, examine the bottom at the supposed site of the crash and, most importantly, bring the treasure to the surface, he had about 160 investors who agreed to invest a total of almost 13 million dollars in his expedition.

The expedition was crowned with success: September 11 of the year 1988 was raised by the robot Thompson from the bottom of the ship bell “Central America”, a load of coins and gold bars. The total weight of the treasure was about two tons of gold; The total cost is estimated at 100 – 150 million dollars. One of the bars - weighing 36 kilograms - was recognized as the largest in the world and after some time sold for eight million.

But then difficulties began: when the discovery was announced, 39 insurance companies, which paid damages in connection with the ship crash in 1857, declared their rights to the treasure. The litigation ended only in the 1996 year, when the court recognized that the gold had been thrown and should now belong to those who had found it. However, the fun began when Tommy Thompson disappeared with his find.

The most interesting thing is that his deceived partners only realized after 10 years, and Thompson was only able to find it later.

In 2005 and 2006, the expedition investors and members of the search team sued the treasure hunter. According to them, Thompson sold most of the gold, hid the rest and disappeared, without returning the money promised for the partners to the partners. It was only in the 2012 year that the treasure hunter could be summoned to the court, after Thompson did not appear at the meeting, the search began.

Thompson was hunted for more than two years. The American authorities called him "the most cunning fugitive." Finally, he was discovered at a hotel near West Palm Beach, Florida.

The fate of the treasure remains unclear until now. Thompson was brought to court, where he confessed that part of the treasure — gold coins worth several million dollars — he hid in Belize, but he soon declared that he did not remember exactly where.

In November 2016, the judge ordered Thompson to be jailed for a year and fined with a thousand dollars every day until he was given back memory. So far, however, this has not happened.

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