Drain the Oceans Episode, the Story of the MV LUCONA Scam

Later this weekend there would be an episode of Drain the Oceans (National Geographic Channel) based on one of the early discoveries of our friend and shipwreck hunter David Mearns of Blue Water Recoveries, LTD. Back in the 1990s David worked for a company called Eastport International, the group that won the contract to go locate an exceptionally hard ship to find, one involved in a possible insurance scam which included murder. The ship was the MV LUCONA, the man responsible for her disappearance and the death of 6 people, Udo Proksch. Proksch was a wealthy man; entitled, spoiled and very dangerous. He was a Nazi sympathizer during WW2 and had friends the like of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and Heinrich Himmler. The discovery due to the work of David and Eastport led to the downfall of this horrible man, who died in prison in 2001 during heart surgery. In David's book, "The Shipwreck Hunter: A lifetime of extraordinary discovery and adventure n the deep seas," he goes into remarkable detail in describing the endeavor of putting together the crew and equipment necessary to carry this out, and the research involved. This story is just one of the 25 major shipwrecks he covers in the book. If you have not read the book I highly recommend you do. And full disclosure, he has some very nice things to say about myself and the project in the last chapter. For that, I will always be appreciative. 

This episode of Drain the Oceans is titled, "$20 Million Time Bomb: a bomb, murder, and a foiled multi-million insurance scam on the high seas". The broadcast is on Nat Geo this Sunday April 9th at 10 pm EST. Below are images of the introduction to this chapter from the book. Just a couple of paragraphs, a teaser to whet the whistle.

​-Tammi

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