"The bottom was carpeted with gold. Gold everywhere, like a garden. The more you looked, the more you saw gold growing out of everything, embedded in all the wood and beams. It was amazing."
In 1857, a gold rush steamer named the SS Central America sank to the bottom of the Atlantic with a treasure of some 30,000 pounds of gold.
Over 130 years later, a marine engineer named Tommy Thompson discovered the wreck off the coast of the Carolinas. In 1989, his team brought about two tons of gold coins and ingots to the surface — valued at over $76 million. Thompson walked away with around $50 million, transferring much of his riches to overseas accounts.
But it wouldn't be smooth sailing for Thompson. He had reportedly failed to repay the investors who'd financed his expedition and soon became embroiled in several lawsuits. In 2012, a court issued a federal warrant for Thompson's arrest, ordering that he disclose the whereabouts of roughly 500 gold coins minted from the treasure. Instead, he went on the run. After two years of searching, police finally tracked him down to a Florida hotel where he'd been hiding out with his girlfriend, paying his rent in cash and living under a fake name.
Today, Thompson sits behind bars, accruing $1,000 in fines each day until he discloses the location of the missing gold coins.
Source: Realhistoryuncovered
