A convicted child molester has been sentenced to 220 years in federal prison for producing child sexual abuse material and hacking the jumbotron at the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium after the team learned he was a registered sex offender and fired him.
According to ABC News, Samuel Arthur Thompson, 53, of St. Augustine was convicted in November of producing, receiving and possessing sexual images of children, producing such images while required to register as a sex offender, violating the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, sending unauthorized damaging commands to a protected computer and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.
Thompson was arrested in 2020 after he was deported by the Philippines back to the U.S. He had been convicted back in 1998 of assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Alabama. That conviction required that he register as a sex offender.
The Jaguars hired Thompson in 2013 as a contractor to consult on the design and installation of their new video board network and later to operate the jumbotron on game days. The team did not renew his contract in 2018 after learning of his conviction and status as a sex offender.
Prior to his contract ending, Thompson installed remote access software on a spare server in the Jaguar's server room, which he then used to control the jumbtron during three 2018 season, causing the videoboards to malfunction repeatedly.
The Jaguars eventually found the remote access software and removed it. The FBI then traced the software back to Thompson, eventually executing a search warrant at Thompson's home where they found thousands of images and hundreds of videos of child sexual abuse on Thompson's devices.
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.
