JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A convicted child molester has been sentenced to 220 years in federal prison for creating child sexual abuse materials and hacking the Jumbotron at Jacksonville Jaguars Stadium. However, he was fired when the team learned that the boy was a registered sex offender.
A federal judge in Jacksonville sentenced Samuel Arthur Thompson, 53, of St. Augustine, on Monday, according to court records.
In November, he was charged with making, receiving, and possessing sexual images of children, making such images while required to register as a sex offender, violating the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, and being charged with being a protected sex offender. He was convicted of transmitting a command that caused unauthorized damage to a computer and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Convicted felon.
Officials said Thompson was arrested in early 2020 after being deported to the United States by the Philippines.
He fled to the Southeast Asian country about six months ago after the FBI executed a search warrant at his home and seized several computers, according to a criminal complaint.
Thompson was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Alabama in 1998, according to court records.
Among other things, his conviction required him to register as a sex offender and report his international travel.
Investigators said the Jaguars hired Thompson as a contractor in 2013 to consult on the design and installation of a new videoboard network and then to operate the Jumbotron on game days.
The team chose not to renew his contract in 2018 after learning of his conviction and status as a sex offender.
Before Thompson’s contract ended in March 2018, he installed remote access software on a backup server in the Jaguars’ server room, prosecutors said.
He then remotely accessed the computer controlling the jumbotron during three games in the 2018 season, repeatedly causing the video board to malfunction.
Prosecutors say the Jaguars eventually found a backup server and removed access to the jumbotron.
The next time they accessed the server during a game, the team was able to gather network information about the intruder, which the FBI tracked to Thompson’s home, prosecutors said.
According to log files, the FBI executed a search warrant at Thompson’s residence in July 2019 and seized a cell phone, a tablet, and two laptops used to access the backup Jumbotron server.
Investigators said they also seized a firearm that Thompson was prohibited from possessing as a convicted felon.
The FBI also found thousands of images and hundreds of videos of child sexual abuse on the device.
Investigators said the files contained videos and images of children Thompson had created in the month before the home attack, depicting children in his care.
The Jaguars released a statement in November following Thompson’s conviction, thanking federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for their work on the case.
