A U.S. District Judge in Florida sentenced a convicted sex offender to 220 years in federal prison for producing, receiving and possessing child sexual abuse material and hacking into the Jacksonville Jaguars’ stadium jumbotron after the team did not renew his contract. upon learning he was a registered sex offender.
U.S. District Judge Brian J. Davis on Tuesday convicted Samuel Arthur Thompson, 53, of the crimes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida said in a statement. A federal jury convicted Thompson in November 2023 of the crimes, as well as producing child sexual abuse material while required to register as a sex offender, violating the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), and possessing a firearm. fire as a convicted felon.
Thompson was previously convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Alabama in 1998 and was required to register as a sex offender.
Federal prosecutors said in their statement that Thompson was hired by the Jaguars around 2013 to help design and install the stadium’s main screen and was then tasked with running it on game days.
“Thompson’s contract with the Jaguars required him to report his conviction, but he did not do so. “In January 2018, the Jaguars decided not to renew Thompson’s contract after learning of his conviction and his status as a registered sex offender,” the statement said. “Before Thompson’s contract expired in March 2018, Thompson installed remote access software on an additional server in the Jaguars’ server room. “Thompson then remotely accessed the computers that controlled the Jumbotron during three NFL games of the 2018 season, causing the video cards to repeatedly malfunction.”
The Jaguars eventually found a spare server and during their next game in December 2018 captured the IP address of the intruder attempting to remotely control the jumbotron. The FBI traced the intruder’s IP address to Thompson’s residence, according to the statement.
In July 2019, the FBI searched Thompson’s home and seized his computers and a firearm that he was prohibited from possessing as a convicted felon. The FBI found files from Thompson’s devices that showed they were used to remotely access the spare server, as well as thousands of images and hundreds of videos depicting child sexual abuse material, according to the statement.
“Samuel Thompson repeatedly abused and exploited innocent children, inflicting immeasurable harm on his victims,” Coult Markovsky, acting special agent in charge of the FBI in Jacksonville, said in a statement. “He also abused and exploited his employer by installing malicious software to manipulate his systems, which could have caused significantly greater harm if it had not been detected.”
In a statement released in November after Thompson’s conviction, the Jaguars thanked prosecutors for their work on the case.
(Photo: Perry Knotts/Getty Images)
