What In the World Happened To Gold-Hunter Tommy Thompson?
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He was a brilliant gold-hunter who arguably made a huge mistake by succeeding. Ocean engineer, Tommy Thompson, once crowned a scientific “rock star,” uncovered a shipful of gold that pretty much wrecked his life and turned him into a wild-haired, jabbering federal inmate who rarely tells the same story twice.
In a lengthy, but fascinating article, Narratively does a deep ‘dive’ into the scientist’s stunning rise and fall. Thompson, devoted to undersea discovery, bet his career on finding the SS Central America, a Gold Rush-era ship that sank in 1857 with up to 21 tons of gold on board.
His newly designed submersible first spotted it in 1988, but then came a deluge of lawsuits from entities all wanting a piece of the pie—including 39 insurers that claimed they had insured the cargo in the 19th century.
Applying his hyper-intelligent mind, Thompson, vigorously fought the suits but he began to unravel amid a long divorce and his father’s death. He sold some coins in 2000 for $50 million—all which went to paying legal fees and loans. An investor told Columbus Monthly years ago: “Tommy was in agony,” . The troubled scientist eventually ran off with 500 gold coins worth about $2.5 million and was arrested in a Florida hotel room, sickly and pale, in 2015.
Now at 66, he’s “serving an indefinite sentence … for civil contempt” for not giving up the location of the missing coins; his lawyer says they are out of Thompson’s reach in an irrevocable trust in Belize. But is it his fault, the investors’, or is the gold cursed?
“People, modern and historical, are all flawed,” says a mission scientist. “The one true superlative is the treasure.” Unfortunately, for Tommy Thompson, all that glitters these days is not gold.
Click for the full story.
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I wish I could get Tommy out to my farm where he could unwind.I don’t want his gold.I would like to get him swinging in one of my hammocks http://www.deckhandman.com
I met him years ago when I worked at a law firm in Miami, very pleasant!!
Pecunia non olet Money has no smell. I think that was Vespasian – but somehow the greedy flock to it and the people it touches often stink. Whether the money was legitimate or not, it brings out the worst in us when we think (and we always do) we have a claim on it. Individual greed is as nothing compared to the greed of corporations and governments. I feel for this guy.
I too feel for this guy. Spent years of his life in pursuit of this gold, only to learn everyone else has a claim to it. I’m still not sure how he ended up in jail.