Fugitive treasure hunter Tommy Thompson will stay in Palm Beach County for now. 
 
 In federal court Wednesday, he told the judge about an auto immune disease he says will make him very sick if he is extradited to Ohio. 
 
 Vero Beach attorney Julia Graves appeared in court to say she will represent Thompson locally, but she has not formally been admitted to the federal bar so she was not allowed to technically appear. 
 
 The judge decided to postpone the hearing until next week while Graves researches the case. 
 
 U.S. Marshals testified in court they found nearly $500 thousand in cash in the Boca Raton hotel room where they arrested Thompson and his girlfriend Alison Antekeier. 
 
 A marshal testified the cash was hidden inside safes in two suitcases. 
 
 Also, marshals say there are still at least three South Florida storage units the couple had that have not been searched. 
 
 They say they found documents related to asylum and leaving the United States in the hotel room. 
 
 Both Antekeier and Thompson will remain in custody with no bond. 
 
 Thompson is wanted for failing to appear in court in one of the lengthy legal fights that followed his 1980s discovery of millions of dollars in gold bars and coins from the S.S. Central America, a ship that sank in a hurricane off the North Carolina coast in 1857. Investors say they paid Thompson over twelve million dollars to fund the voyage, but they claim he never paid them back, hid the gold, and didn't show up for court. ||||| WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — As federal authorities seek to extradite a deep-sea treasure hunter arrested last week after more than two years as a fugitive, his former business associates want to know what happened to millions of dollars' worth of gold he recovered from a historic shipwreck. 
 
 Tommy Thompson is scheduled for an extradition hearing Wednesday in a federal court in Florida. He's being held on an arrest warrant filed after he failed to appear in an Ohio courtroom to explain what happened to all the gold he recovered from a 19th-century shipwreck off the South Carolina coast. 
 
 U.S. marshals arrested Thompson and his longtime assistant in a Boca Raton hotel on Jan. 27. Authorities believe the two had been staying in a suite there for up to two years, paying with cash, using fake names and keeping a low profile. 
 
 Less than 48 hours after the arrests, investors and sonar analysts who sued Thompson about a decade ago for their share of the treasure filed subpoenas in federal court, seeking any documents from the hotel that may show how Thompson has been living a cash-only lifestyle for so long. 
 
 "If he has millions of dollars of cash hidden somewhere, if he has 500 gold coins hidden somewhere, those are assets he needs to answer questions about," said Mike Szolosi, a Columbus, Ohio attorney representing nine sonar analysts who sued Thompson in 2006, arguing that they'd been cheated out of 2 percent of profits from gold recovered from the shipwreck, plus years of interest. 
 
 That lawsuit is still pending, as is another filed by an Ohio newspaper company that never saw returns after investing about $1 million to help fund Thompson's dream to find the ship. 
 
 Thompson, now 62, made history in 1988 when he found the S.S. Central America, known as the Ship of Gold, which sank in a hurricane about 200 miles off the South Carolina coast in September 1857, claiming 425 lives. Thousands of pounds of California gold went down with the vessel — so much gold that it contributed to an economic panic. 
 
 Much of the gold that Thompson recovered was sold to a gold marketing group in 2000 for about $50 million. Thompson's attorneys and supporters have said the treasure hunter didn't steal anything, and that most of the sale proceeds went toward repaying loans and legal fees spanning decades. 
 
 Szolosi said there's ample evidence that Thompson has 500 commemorative coins made from gold bars recovered from the shipwreck and worth at least an estimated $2 million. 
 
 Thompson will have to go through the extradition process in Florida before he's brought to Ohio, where he will have to answer to the criminal arrest warrant in federal court, and eventually, to the two lawsuits by the investor and sonar analysts. 
 
 During a brief court hearing last week, a shackled and bearded Thompson suggested he would fight extradition to Ohio, where he grew up and was based before he moved to Florida in the mid-2000s. 
 
 Thompson told U.S. Magistrate Dave Lee Brannon he has "been very ill for a number of years" with a type of encephalitis, an overactive immune system and allergies that would be exacerbated if he is taken north. 
 
 The last time Thompson was seen before his arrest was in 2012 at a mansion in Vero Beach, Florida, that he had rented since 2006. He paid the monthly $3,000 rent with cash and put the utilities in the landlord's name. 
 
 There, authorities say they found a book called "How to Live Your Life Invisible" describing how to get by on a cash-only basis. They also found bank wraps for $10,000; metal pipes that authorities believed were used to store money underground; and 12 active cellphones, each used for specific attorneys or family members. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Myers reported from Washington.
– Deep-sea treasure hunter Tommy Thompson made headlines in 1988 when he found the legendary "Ship of Gold" (aka the USS Central America) shipwreck off the coast of South Carolina, which sank to the ocean floor with thousands of pounds of gold in 1857. Now he's in the news again after his arrest in Florida last week, with authorities saying he was on the lam for two years to avoid facing lawsuits from investors and sonar analysts who want their promised share of whatever booty he pulled up, the AP reports. The state of Ohio is trying to extradite Thompson after he failed to show up for a court appearance there; a Florida judge has postponed his next hearing to next week. As for those aforementioned investors and business associates, they want to know where Thompson's money is—after all, he used just cash for two years in order to remain undetected, and US Marshals say they found almost $500,000 in cash in his hotel room—and they've filed subpoenas seeking documents from his hotel stay. "If he has millions of dollars of cash hidden somewhere, if he has 500 gold coins hidden somewhere, those are assets he needs to answer questions about," says an attorney for the sonar analysts who sued for profits they say they were cheated out of. The recovered gold was reportedly sold for $50 million to a gold marketing firm in 2000, though Thompson's lawyers and supporters say he used most of the sale funds to pay off loans and legal fees, but what Florida authorities say they found in 2012 at a mansion he used to rent doesn't look good: bank wraps for $10,000 amounts, a dozen cellphones (each one designated for a different attorney or relative), and pipes ostensibly used to hide money underground. The attorney says there is evidence Thompson has gold coins worth at least $2 million. Thompson, who is fighting extradition, has at least three storage units that have not yet been searched, WPTV reports. (What might lie at the bottom of a South Carolina river: millions of Civil War munitions.)