A treasure hunter has walked free following a 10-year stay behind bars after refusing to disclose the whereabouts of roughly 500 gold coins from a legendary shipwreck.
Tommy Thompson, the 73-year-old American deep-sea adventurer, discovered millions of dollars' worth of booty in 1988 from a sunken ship.
The coins remain missing from the SS Central America, a vessel commonly referred to as the Ship of Gold, which Mr Thompson located off South Carolina's coastline nearly forty years ago.
However, investors who backed his expedition accused him of swindling them out of their promised share of the proceeds.
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The SS Central America met its fate in 1857 whilst transporting 30,000lbs of freshly minted gold from San Francisco to the eastern seaboard, where it was intended to bolster bank reserves.
Its precious cargo was lost when the vessel plunged 7,000 feet beneath the ocean's surface, claiming the lives of 425 passengers and crew members.
The catastrophic loss of such substantial gold reserves sent shockwaves through the American financial system, helping trigger the economic turmoil known as the Panic of 1857.
It remained undisturbed on the seabed for more than a century until Mr Thompson, then an ocean engineer at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, led his team in recovering thousands of gold bars and coins.
A US treasure hunter has walked free after refusing to give up the location of the SS Central America shipwreck and missing gold coins
|GETTY
A total of 161 investors had entrusted Mr Thompson with £ 9.4million to locate the sunken vessel, expecting substantial returns on their investment.
Much of the recovered treasure was subsequently sold to a gold marketing company in 2000 for approximately £37million.
Yet the investors launched legal action in 2005, claiming they had received nothing from the sale.
A criminal complaint later valued the recovered gold bars and coins at up to £296million.
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Tommy Thompson, a 73-year-old American deep-sea adventurer, discovered millions of dollars' worth of booty in 1988 from a sunken ship
|GETTY
Mr Thompson vanished in 2012 whilst facing court summonses, and authorities eventually tracked him down three years later in Boca Raton, Florida.
He and an associate had been residing in a hotel for two years, settling bills with cash under an assumed identity and relying solely on taxis and public transport to evade capture.
Mr Thompson maintained the missing coins had been transferred to a trust based in Belize, according to CBS News.
He also claimed proceeds from the initial gold sale had been largely consumed by legal expenses and bank loan repayments.
Despite spending a decade in custody, Thompson never wavered in his silence regarding the coins' precise location.
Civil contempt sentences typically continue indefinitely until the individual complies with the court's demands.
However, the presiding judge concluded last year that Thompson would never provide an answer, leading to the decision to terminate his contempt sentence and grant his release.
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