Columbus Exploration News

An Ohio man who recovered as much as $400 million in gold from a shipwreck has been arrested in Florida after two years on the run and was scheduled to appear in federal court on Wednesday. Tommy Thompson was detained on Tuesday night at a Hilton hotel in west Boca Raton, Florida, said Barry Golden, spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service in the Southern District of Florida. He was due to appear in federal court in West Palm Beach on Wednesday, Golden said. He is wanted for failing to appear in a federal court in Ohio in 2012. Thompson was arrested with a woman, Alison Antekeier, who also has an outstanding arrest warrant in Ohio, according to Golden. They appeared to have been living in the hotel for about two years, he said.

Deep-ocean exploration company Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. has completed the current phase of the recovery operations on the SS Central America shipwreck project. The recovery ship, Odyssey Explorer, has returned to Charleston, South Carolina, for necessary repairs and installation of new equipment, which is expected to take approximately two to three weeks. In addition to more than 15,500 gold and silver coins, 45 gold bars and hundreds of other gold nuggets, gold dust, jewelry and artifacts recovered from the shipwreck site over the past five months…

Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. has placed operational reports and inventories of items recovered from the SS Central America shipwreck site on the company's website at shipwreck.net/ssca.php. These items were initially filed under seal in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division. Chief U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith has allowed the reports to be unsealed and made available to the public. Odyssey has been working since April 2014 under contract to Ira Owen Kane, the receiver for Recovery Limited Partnership (RLP).

Deep-ocean exploration company Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., has been awarded the exclusive contract to conduct an archaeological excavation and recover the remaining valuable cargo from the SS Central America shipwreck located approximately 160 miles off the coast of South Carolina. The ship, which was immortalized in the best-selling book, "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea," sank in 1857 with one of the largest documented cargoes of gold ever lost at sea. Odyssey was selected for the project by Ira Owen Kane…