COLUMBUS, Ohio – After more than two years on the run, a central Ohio treasure hunter and his companion were in a Florida courtroom yesterday, wearing blue jumpsuits and chained by the hands, feet and waist.
The U.S. Marshals Service announced Wednesday that authorities had captured Tommy Thompson and Alison Antekeier Tuesday at an upscale hotel in West Boca Raton. The pair had been on the lam for two years.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
Thompson is accused of cheating investors out of their share of $50 million in gold bars and coins he had recovered from a 19th century shipwreck, one of the largest undersea treasure hauls in U.S. history.
Thompson is set for an initial appearance Thursday morning in federal court in West Palm Beach.
Since the 1980s, Thompson has been in a struggle over an expedition to find gold in the wreckage of the S.S. Central America, which sank off the East Coast in 1850.
Investors and former employees claim Thompson got millions from the gold brought up from the wreck but they got nothing.
Authorities say Thompson and Antkeier were paying cash for the hotel room where they lived for more than a year, had no vehicles registered in their names and that Antekeier used public buses and taxis to move around Palm Beach County.
The Marshals Service said officers conducted surveillance on her for hours Tuesday before following her back to the hotel in Boca Raton where the two were arrested without incident.