Would you? - Treasure hunter spends 10 years in jail for not disclosing treasure location

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A former deep-sea treasure hunter who made one of the greatest shipwreck discoveries in American history and spent the past decade in prison after refusing to disclose the whereabouts of some of its missing gold coins is now free

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The ship sank in September 1857, along with 425 passengers and crewmembers and 30,000 pounds of federal gold from the new San Francisco Mint to create a reserve for banks in the eastern U.S. The ship was located by Thompson and his team more than 7,000 feet below the surface.

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Investors who backed Thompson's venture sued him in 2005, saying they had yet to receive any money from the $50 million sale of more than 500 gold bars and thousands of coins — just part of the ship's booty.

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Three years later, authorities tracked Thompson to a Florida hotel where he was living under a fake name. The judge then held him in contempt and sent Thompson to prison at the end of 2015 for refusing to answer questions about the location of missing coins.

Thompson, now 73, maintained that the coins — valued then at $2.5 million — were turned over to a trust in Belize and said the $50 million from the sale of the first batch of gold mostly went toward legal fees and bank loans.

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Thompson's adventure started in 1983 when he began to grow obsessed about tracking down the SS Central America, which carried 425 people and gold worth hundreds of millions millions of dollars when it was lost in a hurricane in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina.

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Not long after, 39 companies claimed they had insured the gold back in 1857 and that it belonged to them, suing him for their right to the treasure, the AP reported.

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In 1996, Thompson's company was awarded 92 per cent of the treasure, with the rest divided among some of the insurers. Four years later, Thompson's company made $50 million selling 532 gold bars and thousands of coins to a gold marketing group.

But Thompson still hadn't paid his investors. Two of them - a now-deceased investment firm president who invested $250,000 and the Dispatch Printing Company, which put in about $1 million - sued in 2005.

And the following year, nine members of Thompson's crew piled on their own lawsuit, claiming they were promised some of the proceeds.

After that Thompson sank into seclusion and moved into a mansion in Vero Beach, Florida. He said he feared for his life.

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