But also amusingly Deep-sea treasure hunter jailed for 10 years scores legal win but won't be freed (10 points, 1 year ago, 2 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923251
Was that not the case? If it is, is the BBC in the unavoidable click-bait game now?
> Investors in Thompson's venture accused him of cheating them out of promised proceeds and after years on the run he was jailed in 2015 on a criminal contempt charge.
> They had been staying in a hotel for two years, paying cash for their room under a false name and using taxis and public transport to avoid detection.
But unless he plans on leaving secret wealth to his children, it scarcely sounds like a win even if he did actually get the $400 million. The investors are likely to watch him closely post-release for any actual accessing of the money. But even otherwise, what a life. Even if you have the $400 m worth of money somewhere, you're still living for years out of a hotel in Boca Raton, FL only going places via taxi and public transport while trying not to leave a paper trail. Then you're in jail for 10 years.
I suppose he can live out his seventies and later, but damn.
https://apnews.com/article/tommy-thompson-gold-coins-shipwre...
Thompson himself published a coffee table book about the find, "America's Lost Treasure."
Look at these passages:
"Investors in Thompson's venture accused him of cheating them out of promised proceeds and after years on the run he was jailed in 2015 on a criminal contempt charge.
But last year, the judge agreed to end Thompson's civil contempt sentence, arguing that he was unlikely to ever offer an answer, according to CBS News."
Let’s say he dies in 5 years. 10 years later his children suddenly clearly become rich and can’t explain how. Clearly it looks like he passed the gold to them somehow.
Could the investors then somehow sue his estate then to get the value of the gold back? Or would it be too late?
For all we know he stole money, but not what they thought. Maybe after his time in hiding there’s only a few thousand left and it’s all largely moot anyway.
He’d be more sympathetic if he hadn’t been hiding and suspiciously paying cash for everything for years.
> A total of 161 investors had given Thompson $12.7m (£9.4m) to find the ship on the understanding that they would see returns on their investment.
Both the criminal and civil contempt arose from his refusal to abide court orders from the civil suit.[1]
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/treasure-hunter-sentenc...
If you dont hate whats requested, how do you get out any time you want?
Here is the idea - six month in jail for contempt.
> The justice system depends on judges being able to compel action"
It does not. The person gets punished and this should be the end of it. Instead they have Machiavellian twist bypassing all standard checks and bounds.
Daddy they've hurt my ego.
Imagine if this was the 1500s and the man in the robe was a priest. Would you be okay with that? and if your answer is some form of distinction without a difference argument, I'd urge you to not even reply.
It doesn't even seem worth it since the original investors wanted a fraction of the proceeds not all of it. Just seems like a strange choice, but I suppose that's why I'm not an intrepid underwater gold adventurer and this guy is.
>Tommy Thompson, 73
No not _forever_ :)
They could just demand someone turn over evidence that doesn't exist, or that they know the person doesn't know about?
It is if you don't have the item(s) or knowledge being asked for.
https://apnews.com/article/tommy-thompson-gold-coins-shipwre...
You can claim “I forgot” in response to questioning, and the judge will decide on the balance of evidence whether you appear to be telling the truth. Contra the panicky memes about contempt of court, people aren’t indefinitely detained because they forgot something. But that’s clearly not what happened here.
But the kind of person who thinks that way never becomes a treasure hunter in the first place.
There is no such thing as a valid reason to skip the part where you have to prove guilt. Even for a judge. Frankly especially for a judge. Everyone else has the excuse that they aren't lawyers. What's a judges excuse?
Do not make me laugh. What evidence? Persons can and do forget most obvious things.
>In 2014, a secondary recovery operation was launched by Odyssey Marine Exploration under court supervision to get the rest of the treasure Thompson left behind.
Chief Judge Rebecca Beach Smith issued a ruling in August 2016 awarding the title of the newly recovered items to the salvors (of the original insurance company that paid out for the wreck). Operational reports and inventories were officially filed with the court.
The court inventory for this second trip alone included 15,500 gold and silver coins, 45 gold bars, gold dust, and hundreds of 19th-century artifacts. This included a glass-plate photograph of a woman dubbed the "Mona Lisa of the Deep" and what is believed to be the world's oldest known pair of miner's work jeans.
He should have given the investors their money, taken his performance fee, and not spend up to half of his remaining lifespan (and probably around 3/4 of his remaining health span).
On the other hand, if he has grandkids and he manages to give them say 100mm instead of 20mm, he may feel it was worth it genetically.
Presuming he holds keys to vast wealth, the calculation would have shifted over time. Especially once he was serving his original sentence again starting a year ago.
Another consideration is that many go to jail longer with no upside once getting released.
Inmates would start threatening and exporting him as soon as they learned of this and might even continue after he is out.
To your other point it wouldn’t be too hard to sell 10% of the gold to dealers with the proceeds /paperwork unaccounted for / off the books.
17 hours ago
Grace Eliza Goodwin

Getty Images
Gold bars taken from the SS Central America ship are displayed at the Museum of American Financial History in 2003 in New York City
A US deep-sea treasure hunter who refused to disclose the location of a famed shipwreck's gold coins has been released from prison after a decade, with 500 coins still unaccounted for.
Tommy Thompson, 73, discovered millions of dollars' worth of sunken treasure from the 1857 wreck of the SS Central America, also known as the Ship of Gold, off the coast of South Carolina in 1988.
Investors in Thompson's venture accused him of cheating them out of promised proceeds and after years on the run he was jailed in 2015 on a criminal contempt charge.
When it sank in 1857, the ship had been carrying 30,000 pounds of gold newly minted in San Francisco.
The ship's treasure, which had been en route to the east coast to create a reserve for banks, sank 7,000 feet to the bottom of the ocean, taking with it 425 passengers and crew, and contributing to the financial panic of 1857.
A total of 161 investors had given Thompson $12.7m (£9.4m) to find the ship on the understanding that they would see returns on their investment.
Thompson, then an oceanic engineer at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and his crew brought up thousands of gold bars and coins in 1988, much of them later sold to a gold marketing group in 2000 for about $50m.
He had maintained that the coins were turned over to a trust in Belize and that the profits from the sale of the first batch of gold had mostly gone toward legal fees and bank loans, according to the BBC's US partner CBS News.
The investors sued Thompson in 2005, alleging they had not yet received any proceeds from the treasure's sale.
Later, a criminal complaint against Thompson said the gold bars and coins he recovered from the seafloor were worth up to $400m.
Thompson went missing in 2012 while facing demands he appear in court and, after years on the run, he and an associate were arrested in 2015 in Boca Raton, Florida.
They had been staying in a hotel for two years, paying cash for their room under a false name and using taxis and public transport to avoid detection.
Civil contempt sentences are usually indefinite, lasting until the person complies with the court order - which in this case would be divulging the location of the missing coins.
But last year, the judge agreed to end Thompson's civil contempt sentence, arguing that he was unlikely to ever offer an answer, according to CBS News.
It’s worth pointing out no one knew it would be 10 years, not even the judge. The sentence wasn’t “10 years”, it was “indefinitely until we get an answer”. It just so happens that 10 years is when this judge decided “alright, we’re not going to get an answer, no point in the jail time”.
I’d say it’s almost expected that someone in that position would skim off the top in this way. The problem is he stole it all and that’s obviously going to raise questions.
Melt some down, have it remade into other things, and it gains a bit of weight here and there.
If you wanted some sort of legal paper trail to fall back on you can spend a bit of money on a few machines and rights to a gold claim in Alaska, dig some random holes for a few months, then claim you struck it rich.
It seems more plausible to me he actually doesn't have the gold.
No, that's not what happened. I'm guessing you saw this news before under a clickbait title.
It's not about where gold was found, it's about where he stashed it later. These are assets that are (or were) in his hands which partially belong to all the investors he defrauded.
For one, to convict him, they’d need to prove the coins existed (actually) and they were plausibly worth that much. Not a straightforward thing if you have no idea where they are, eh?
You just reminded me of this old internet horror story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h-cAbOyRXc
At 16 waking hours per day, we're losing at least half of that with work, so it would only take 1 additional decade before I break even in terms of time, not even considering the vastly improved quality of life having millions of dollars of annual passive income nets you. I could even afford dram.
10 years is nothing compared to 400m
It’s a mystery to me how on one day on HN you will see “corporate death penalty” discussed and on the next “$400MM white collar crimes should not be punished as much as murdering a single person”.
If this were Apple, Google, or Meta having committed the crime, I think the tenor of the discussion would be very different.
“On my life, I will not part with a single coin.”
And sure, it depends on the jail... Can I like go for at least a short bike ride or go running? Can I have my computer and internet and Hacker News? Can I drink my oolongs and pu-erhs? Is the food delicious? But then it's not much of a jail anymore...
I general, as in some rich weirdo like Mr. Beast made that deal and you can have your $400m fair and square at the end? Ok that’s a different scenario to one more plausible here where after 10 years you and your family may never be able a to spend it without being sued or jailed again because it’s disputed.
Second, it depends on if you can keep anybody else who is in jail from knowing that you're sitting on $400 million. Otherwise that info will be beaten out of you long before your sentence ends. Maybe that's OK if it's at the bottom of the sea.
The idea that money will cure all life's ailments and screwups and bring happiness is an idea of a clueless poor man. At that age, priorities are normally elsewhere since everybody feel like they don't know the day and hour when something bad happens.
And I don't think it's a good idea to hand family members never-work money. Their own achievements become meaningless.
Always have your conversations in person and have underlings sign documents relating to transactions.
Also, you can systemically steal from future generations with no consequence, as a voter and leader. Promise people today big pensions and retiree healthcare, underfund today by telling actuaries to use unrealistic assumptions, or just straight up ignore funding recommendations, and then let the debt pile up for others to deal with.
LOL. The whole system is based on constantly stealing fruits of one's labor by way of inflation and 2 classes of haves and have-nots in regards to real assets. How can regular Joe have faith in it is beyond my comprehension.
Well, stationary bike riding at least - not all of them have large yards that take a good while to cycle about.
* https://www.sixnorwegianprisons.com/spaces/rehabilitation.ht...
Some prisons have large field for outdoor activities, like walking together, running, playing football, and skiing and skating in the winter.
* https://www.sixnorwegianprisons.com/spaces/yard.html> But then it's not much of a (US) jail anymore...
exactly - these are Norwegian gaols. They started out much like US gaols but once it came clear how poorly they performed (wrt good of community rather than pockets of BigBarsCo.) they were overhauled:
* https://www.firststepalliance.org/post/norway-prison-system-...
The ongoing refusal to answer questions under oath is.
He could have agreed to talk anytime and been released shortly.
If you aren't free to leave, and you're kept apart from society it's a jail. No one is ever sentenced to "10 years of eating bad food". Our prison system may torture people, it may feed them maggot infested food, it may deny them healthcare or safety, but that's not justice and it's not the punishment they were given, it's just an abuse they're made to suffer because the cruel and the greedy have been able to get away with it.
If we've determined that somebody is too dangerous to live with the rest of our society there's no reason at all that they should have to be miserable or suffer needlessly. It's enough that they are kept away from us so that we're safe from them. Their actions would have required us to take their freedom, but they should be able to make the best of their situation and not be subjected to inhumane treatment or abuse.
If we feel we need to jail people temporarily as a punitive measure it's enough to keep them locked up, separated from their loved ones, and unable to do what they want or go where they want. The only people who'd think losing your freedom isn't a punishment are those who don't value freedom. Most people really do know it's a punishment, but they just want to see people suffer far beyond what their sentence calls for or the law should ever allow.
You're saying that making money is the sole criteria for "meaningful achievement"?
Otherwise I agree with you it’s not a trade off that is worth it at any point in life
Their own achievements become meaningless.
I'm sure most people wouldn't mind.Now to be fair I might be wrong, since I’ve neither researched this nor given it much thought. Maybe there is research on deca- and centimillionaire heirs that shows positive effects of money on life satisfaction, happiness, health and other life outcomes. However I suspect it works similarly to sheltering kids from adversity, failure and hardship in general: disadvantages them psychologically and leads to more problems down the line.
I remember once reading two bits of news about people given similar sentences. One for copyright infringement, the other for sexual assault of a teenager.
Kept apart from society? And no one will be bothering me? Sounds like heaven.
Perhaps if there was a good chance I could prolong my "still healthy" years by 20 years or more, I should take it. But it seems like disappearing for 10 years would break a lot of things. People will die, friends will move on... sounds like a rather bad deal still.
Which means you can have a bigger positive impact on their lives by being present than by giving them money.
I'm sure there are people out there who would find meaning in creating art of some type, or turning their fortune into an even bigger fortune, but I suspect those people are rare.
It's a civil proceeding not a criminal proceeding so he would not be incriminating himself.
He could argue that by answering he would be admitting crimes and opening himself to criminal liability. But there's a possibly they give him immunity and that route is taken away.
On the other hand, $400m can ensure that for the rest of their lives they and their children and their grandchildren don't have to worry about being able to afford a home, good schools, good healthcare, etc. With future issues such as the rise of AI, global warming, and the erosion of international law, there are many dangers ahead including potential mass disruption to job markets and ability to earn a living. I'd rest easier knowing that I've given my descendants a solid chance of surviving all that, even if it means affecting my relationship with them for 10 years. It's a balance between pros and cons.
Buy every politician and the media to become the effective ruler of your country, then use your influence to improve the lives of your compatriots, overhaul the entire political system and media to add safeguards to prevent anyone from ever again doing what you did, create a just society and become a beacon of hope to the world.
I'm not sure if I would take it either. I would feel better earning (a fraction of) the money instead of just sitting around for it.
That's because they're human, not because they're filthy rich and have all the privileges in the world.
If it were that simple they could give all their money away and get a job at Walmart to find perfect happiness.
Which correlates strongly with ‘success’ in any system where there is a clear metric for success, which is certainly true for our current economic system eh? If there was a system they wanted to compete in where the metric was ‘happiness’ measured by some concrete metric, I bet those same people would be as aggressively ‘happy’ with however it was measured too - and just as actually miserable.
That those people are rarely (if ever) happy is a side effect of those attributes, and a core part of what makes them the way they are.
After all, if they were able to be happy with anything less…. They’d have stopped already? And hence have less/a lower ‘score’ on that particular metric? And probably actually be happier.
Notably, I know plenty of people who are very happy with nothing - dirt poor - and plenty of people who are also miserable with nothing too.
The difference is, it’s a lot less competitive being dirt poor eh?
This is kind of why I want to make this survey now because there’s no way I’d spend a decade of my life in prison for any amount of money. I would do six months for $3M. I’d maybe do 12 for $10M. But beyond that…I don’t know, even a year seems like too long to be behind bars.