Deep sea treasure hunter claims he 'can’t remember' where he stored priceless coins sought by U.S. government

Former deep sea treasure hunter Tommy Thompson claims he can't remember the location of valuable gold coins that were once in his possession. But according to a federal judge, Thompson knows a whole lot more than he's letting on.

The coins were minted from gold discovered in the wreck of the S.S. America, which went under off the coast of South Carolina in 1857. The coins are now believed to be worth millions of dollars. Thompson first discovered the gold in 1988, but the investors who helped raise the millions for the excavation said they didn't get a cut of the profits. As a result, a warrant went out for Thompson's arrest in 2012 and he became a fugitive until he was captured with his girlfriend in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2015, The Associated Press reports.

"Thompson was smart — perhaps one of the smartest fugitives ever sought by the U.S. Marshals," Peter Tobin, U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio, said in a statement after Thompson's January capture.

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Thompson pleaded guilty in April 2015, with his deal requiring him to answer questions about where the coins are located. That's when Thompson stumbled into "memory problems," blaming a neurological disorder that allegedly prevented him from remembering where the coins are at.

Psychiatric evaluations apparently proved that Thompson doesn't actually have any sort of memory problem that would prevent him from knowing the whereabouts of the coins. Thompson "routinely made references to things that demonstrated his retention of information from minutes and hours earlier, he remembered things from one day to the next, he recalled aspects of his various cases with great specificity, and he recalled information about his career and business adventures dating back decades," the evaluation found.

"Thompson previously said, without providing details, that the coins were turned over to a trust in Belize," AP reports, although there are "doubts" about his story. Thompson has been ordered to pay $1,000 a day until he cooperates with the court.