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At no point in my life would I choose to spend 10 years in jail for $400m. Only if my current living situation was very poor and this was my only way out of it. I can sort of imagine why one would... but it seems like an awful decision to me.

It seems more plausible to me he actually doesn't have the gold.

I would maybe spend one year in prison for 40M$. If I actually had a button in front of me that would — if I pressed it — land me in prison for a year and got me 40M$ when I get out, I still wouldn't do it. But I can see the point there. No way would I spend a second year in prison for another 40M$ after that, not even a year for the remaining 360M$. The subjective value of money does not scale linearly. But then again, people are greedy and like big numbers and other unimportant things and they do give away their valuable time of life for these unimportant things instead of using it for actually valuable things.

Why didn't they just convict him of fraud and fine him the estimated value of the missing coins, rather than trying to convince him to divulge where they were? Now, the guy is out of jail and they still haven't recovered the value of the gold from him. Lose-lose for the plaintiffs and for justice. Why are we so soft on fraud?

You're really gonna take what the other party to a lawsuit says at face value? They probably took the most expensive "collector coin" and then assumed all the other coins were worth that rather than melt value.

Well, if there is anywhere to learn how (and make friends with whom!) he could possibly launder $400m worth of gold coins….

> 10 years for refusing to to say where he found gold is wild.

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.

He defrauded his investors. As much as I find that funny, what he did was a white collar crime that has consequences.

In Germany, financial crimes are often punished much harder than capital crimes too. Tells you where the priorities lie.

they mostly get elected to positions of great power i guess

Most don't even get sentenced at all, what's your point?

Several people in the comments are focusing too much on the 10 years and on if that’s an acceptable trade-off.

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”.

Younger. The opportunity cost of time scales non-linearly with age. If you're old enough, 10 years can be a life sentence.

If you ask people that would still have 25+ years of life after they're freed, I bet a lot of them would willingly take that trade.

It depends on what life you've lived so far.

If you’re unsuspecting and the investors get enough return, then it’s really not to hard as no one is going to be watching you or have any reason or ability to audit your finances.

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.

Well you use your real share to generate a complex series of investments to make it very hard to judge your wealth. In it you begin trading gold legitimately, not gold markets but buying and selling real gold. The stuff off the boat gets mixed in over the years. Buy some shipwreck gold! Collect gold coins personally! Buy and sell collectables

Melt some down, have it remade into other things, and it gains a bit of weight here and there.

Melt it down and sell at spot price would be my guess

I mean it is pretty easy to sell gold, especially if you sell it below spot price or melt it. If someone offered me gold at a 10% discount, I would immediately buy it and go sell it at whatever gold dealer for an easy profit. Im sure most gold dealers would do the same thing even if it was obviously stolen spanish gold or something.

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.

18 months is long enough to bankrupt someone and ruin their life. What a shame. No one should have that kind of power.

You ask how else could it possibly work. How about charge him with a crime first, then detain him if he's convicted. The idea that you can imprison someone forever without a charge is insane.

Doesn't this give the government the unchecked ability to detain whoever they want indefinitely, then?

They could just demand someone turn over evidence that doesn't exist, or that they know the person doesn't know about?

> since you can get out any time you want.

If you dont hate whats requested, how do you get out any time you want?

> I don’t have a problem with refusal to e.g. turn over evidence just resulting in detention until you comply. It’s not a prison sentence, since you can get out any time you want.

It is if you don't have the item(s) or knowledge being asked for.

>"How else could it possibly work?"

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.

The is the most totalitarian bullshit I've ever heard on HN. The fact that you're okay with another human, just because they have a robe, to compel you to do as they ask OR rot away without a conviction is utter madness.

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.

Indefinite imprisonment isn't the only way to solve this. Over here we just have trials without the defendant, and they usually don't end up well for them. Better than indefinite imprisonment, though.

The problem obviously being that then there is never a trial and no one ever proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he was even capable of disclosing the information.

And it carries an indefinite sentence? That's crazy

It's confusing because it looks like he was convicted of both

U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley agreed Friday to end Tommy Thompson’s sentence on the civil contempt charge, saying he “no longer is convinced that further incarceration is likely to coerce compliance.” However, he also ordered that the research scientist immediately start serving a two-year sentence he received for a related criminal contempt charge, a term that was delayed when the civil contempt term was imposed.

Man, this is why people with enough "karma" have flagging abilities on this website. Please use it on this story. Pure garbage.

Haha, true! But he could have had millions any way. It's not like he was going to live like a p90 person in the world!

Yes, I think so too. It's the only worthwhile reason to commit this crime, surely. You'd be relying on the claimants abandoning their claim at some point because surely the statute of limitations doesn't just apply because you were particularly good at hiding something. Realistically, they'd have to sell this to a collector many years later for much less than what they're worth (since they can't be sold on with proper provenance tracking).

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.

This link said that his contempt violated a plea agreement and that’s why they were able to hold him longer than the standard limit of 18 months.

https://apnews.com/article/tommy-thompson-gold-coins-shipwre...