$50m salvage expert found in florida |
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Stillhuntinghenry
Jack Charlton useless at posting links Joined: 23 Nov 2011 Status: Offline Points: 8149 |
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Posted: 31 Jan 2015 at 8:13am |
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Read this story the other day, unbelievable story, surely there will be a film about this lad. Kind of a legend but at the same time a kunt
 Tommy Thompson found a gold-buying group that paid him $50m for coins recovered from the SS Central America Missing salvage expert who found $50m of sunken treasure before disappearing, tracked down at last Tommy Thompson, who vanished owing investors $12m, had lived off the grid with his assistant for more than a year before being found at Florida hotel by US Marshals A A+     1K By DAVID USBORNE Thursday 29 January 2015 For two years their faces were plastered by the FBI on electronic billboards in Ohio and across southern Florida and it had begun to look like Tommy Thompson, once America’s most famous hunter of sunken treasure, and his companion, Alison Antekeier, had vanished for good. Now their time on the run is over. It was agents with the US Marshals Service who knocked on the door of a suite at a Boca Raton Hilton hotel on Florida’s east coast on Tuesday and found the fugitives inside. They had been living there under false names, leading a cash-only existences, for more than a year. Today they were to appear in court in West Palm Beach and thereafter, ankles shackled, flown back to Ohio. Many Ohioans recall when Mr Thompson was a native hero of the state. He was the bearded buccaneer with buckets of braggadocio who, in the early 1980s, said he intended to find a paddle steamer called the SS Central America that in 1857 had sunk off the South Carolina coast taking down with it more than 400 souls and thousands of pounds in gold.   The SS ‘Central America’ sank in 1857, taking 425 lives (AP) Betraying nothing but confidence, Mr Thompson rounded up more than 160 wealthy Ohioans to back his scheme to find the “ship of gold” and plunder its treasures. “Tom was a pretty good salesman,” said Don Glower, once dean of mechanical engineering at Ohio State University, who was among those approached. “He had me excited, but I didn’t have any money... I thought it was probably a pie-in-the-sky type of thing. But I said, ‘I think he’s a very bright guy, and if anybody could find it, it’s him.” Yet, even those who had most faith in him were surprised at how quickly he succeeded. The expedition was launched in the summer of 1988 and by October that year he was looking at the first of the lost bullion. “None of us ever thought that it would be so otherworldly in its splendour,” he later wrote in his book, America’s Lost Treasure. Recent archaeologists' discoveries 1 of 11  Next  When, the next spring, he steered his salvage ship back to port in Norfolk, Virginia, it was groaning with a treasure trove of silver, gold coins and bullion all recovered with the help of a state-of-the-art submersible robot called Nemo. But if Mr Thompson and his assistant of many years, Ms Antekeier, were brilliant navigators of the currents of the ocean floor, they were less well equipped to confront the legal maelstroms that their finds inevitably spawned. First, they were challenged by insurance companies laying a claim to the new-found riches. In the late 1990s, a federal admiralty court awarded nearly 8 per cent of whatever Mr Thompson had raised to the insurers. His company was told it could keep the rest. Yet his dry-land nightmares had barely begun. In 2000, Mr Thompson found a gold buying group in California that paid him $50m for the coins and bars he had lifted from the seabed. But what apparently did not then follow were payments to those investors who collectively had given him more than $12m. Two of those investors, including the company that owns one of Ohio’s biggest circulation newspapers, The Columbus Dispatch, sued, demanding at least a clear accounting of what Mr Thompson had done with the money he received. So, too, did nine of his former crew of his old salvage ship who claimed they were owed a cut. By 2006, Mr Thompson and Ms Antekeier, had left Ohio and taken up residence in a rented mansion just north of Boca Raton. At some point thereafter they seemingly decided to take themselves off the grid entirely.  Gold bars recovered from the S.S. 'Central America' (Getty Images) In 2012 a judge declared them in contempt of court and issued a warrant for their arrest. But when US marshals showed up at their rented home they found it in a shambles. Furniture was wrecked, old cell phones were scattered about and pipes stuffed with cash were found buried in the garden. The last person to see Mr Thompson was a handyman found pacing round around the pool in dark glasses and underwear. What they also found were self-help books on how to live under the radar. It was with those skills that the pair holed up at the Hilton. How they US marshals eventually tracked them down we have yet fully to learn. Mr Thompson was “one of the most intelligent fugitives ever sought by the US marshals, and he had vast financial resources at his disposal,” said Ohio US Marshal Peter Tobin. His colleagues in Florida, he added, had “worked tirelessly on this case... to accomplish what many thought would be nearly impossible.” Impossible like finding a 160-year-old shipwreck, two miles down and 200 miles off the Carolina coast. Back in Ohio, meanwhile, those who pursued Mr Thompson for so long can hardly wait to see him back. “This is a relief,” Mike Szolosi, a lawyer for the two original investors, told People magazine. “We’re hopeful there will be an answer as to where the money is.“ It may, of course, all be gone.      |
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"Not one cent" - RTID on Mark Quigley's pay-off from Shamrock
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PanteirA
Jack Charlton Joined: 29 Jul 2012 Location: Ciarrai Status: Offline Points: 6744 |
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Interesting story alright. So if he had paid off his investers he would have still have money and be living the good life. Greed can be a terrible thing
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Stillhuntinghenry
Jack Charlton useless at posting links Joined: 23 Nov 2011 Status: Offline Points: 8149 |
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I think the problem was the $50m was barely covering his costs. The investors put in $12m but it doesn't say what return they were due. Then the insurance company hit him for $4m then his sizeable crew were due their cut and no doubt the IRS wanted their pound of flesh.
Certainly an element of greed as I'm sure he still would have walked away a wealthy man but with outgoings his margin was probably slim and he thought feck it, $50m in the bank, catch me if you can !! |
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"Not one cent" - RTID on Mark Quigley's pay-off from Shamrock
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Stillhuntinghenry
Jack Charlton useless at posting links Joined: 23 Nov 2011 Status: Offline Points: 8149 |
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Can't understand why he didn't go to Brazil or Cuba or something were they'd struggle to get him. Sitting in the Hilton in Florida ffs!!
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"Not one cent" - RTID on Mark Quigley's pay-off from Shamrock
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RogerMilla
Moderator Group #TEAMJAVIER #ENGANCHE Joined: 15 Feb 2007 Location: Delaney Park Status: Offline Points: 34858 |
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Fish out of water in Brazil or Cuba. You could go off the grid easier in the states where you blend in. Ireland way too small a fella would be nabbed but I reckon a paddy could disappear in the uk easy enough |
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The first time the Devil made me do it. The second time I did it on my own.
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Stillhuntinghenry
Jack Charlton useless at posting links Joined: 23 Nov 2011 Status: Offline Points: 8149 |
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Yeah what I meant was if he went to the likes of Cuba and greased the right palms they would never give him up to the yanks anyway. A Ronny Biggs situation if you like |
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"Not one cent" - RTID on Mark Quigley's pay-off from Shamrock
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SuperDave84
Robbie Keane ooh Thomas, how could you do this to me! Joined: 26 Aug 2011 Location: Far Fungannon Status: Offline Points: 21384 |
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Cash in a f**king Hilton, though, madness.
He should have been living in a rented house somewhere paying cash to a dodgy landlord and driving a fifteen year old car. Ostentation always gets you caught. No-one stays in a Hilton for months on end paying for it all with cash without being up to something dodgy. Obviously the hotel were asking no questions as to where the money was coming from (why would they?) but someone must have ratted them out. Far too many staff in a hotel of that size who would know you were paying cash. Plus, if they weren't leaving, even room service and housekeeping staff would know something was dodge. A cheap wig, a cheap car and a rented house in the middle of nowhere where the only person who could even suspect something dodgy would be the landlord. |
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Amby Fogarty
Davey Langan Joined: 02 Apr 2014 Status: Offline Points: 829 |
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Bob Hoskins
Moderator Group Joined: 29 Jul 2007 Status: Offline Points: 20175 |
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What's the craic with the sunglassed pool man rocking out in the togs.
That's the REAL story |
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Romario 2016: And the ticket mafia gets caught! Well, four years ago I had already told the government.
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Steve Amsterdam
Jack Charlton I love buses Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Location: Amsterdam Status: Offline Points: 7381 |
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Interesting story, and perhaps worthy of a Hollywood film.
But 1 year on the run doesn't seem to be too long for “one of the most intelligent fugitives ever sought by the US marshals"....Maybe he should have brought those self help books with him he left behind in his house.... |
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Molly Malone's pub- The home of YBIG in Amsterdam!
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SuperDave84
Robbie Keane ooh Thomas, how could you do this to me! Joined: 26 Aug 2011 Location: Far Fungannon Status: Offline Points: 21384 |
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Well, Brazil isn't the place it used to be.
Sure didn't they say that Michael Lynn has to be sent back. I know the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that he could be extradited back in December although I don't think he is here yet. |
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RogerMilla
Moderator Group #TEAMJAVIER #ENGANCHE Joined: 15 Feb 2007 Location: Delaney Park Status: Offline Points: 34858 |
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he cleaned out a lot of fellas down my way.... eh allegedly.. |
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The first time the Devil made me do it. The second time I did it on my own.
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Stillhuntinghenry
Jack Charlton useless at posting links Joined: 23 Nov 2011 Status: Offline Points: 8149 |
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They had been on the run for a few years Steve |
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"Not one cent" - RTID on Mark Quigley's pay-off from Shamrock
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