A convicted child molester has been sentenced to 220 decades in federal jail for developing little one sexual abuse material and hacking the jumbotron at the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium right after the staff figured out he was a registered sex offender and fired him.
A federal decide in Jacksonville sentenced 53-calendar year-previous Samuel Arthur Thompson, of St. Augustine, on Monday, in accordance to courtroom records. He was convicted in November of producing, obtaining and possessing sexual photos of kids, developing these types of pictures when essential to sign-up as a intercourse offender, violating the Intercourse Offender Registration and Notification Act, sending unauthorized detrimental commands to a guarded laptop or computer and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.
Thompson was arrested in early 2020 immediately after remaining deported by the Philippines back again to the U.S., officials mentioned. He had fled to the Southeast Asian state about six months before, immediately after the FBI executed a look for warrant at his home and seized various of his computer systems, according to a criminal criticism.
According to courtroom records, Thompson was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-12 months-aged boy in Alabama in 1998. Amid other issues, the conviction expected him to register as a sex offender and to report any worldwide travel.
The Jaguars hired Thompson as a contractor in 2013 to seek the advice of on the design and set up of their new online video board network and afterwards to work the jumbotron on gamedays, investigators stated. The staff chose not to renew his agreement in 2018 following mastering of his conviction and standing as a sexual intercourse offender.
In accordance to prosecutors, before Thompson’s contract finished in March 2018, he installed distant entry software package on a spare server in the Jaguars’ server home. He then remotely accessed computer systems managing the jumbotron during a few 2018 time games, creating the video clip boards to malfunction repeatedly.
The Jaguars eventually located the spare server and eradicated its accessibility to the jumbotron, prosecutors mentioned. The future time the server was accessed in the course of a sport, the staff was capable to collect network data about the intruder, which the FBI traced to Thompson’s property, prosecutors said.
The FBI executed a research warrant at Thompson’s residence in July 2019 and seized a telephone, a pill and two laptops, which all had been used to entry the spare jumbotron server, according to log files. Brokers also mentioned they seized a firearm, which Thompson was prohibited from possessing as a convicted felon.
The FBI also located countless numbers of illustrations or photos and hundreds of videos of youngster sexual abuse on the equipment. The files included movies and images that Thompson had generated a month before the raid on his property that depicted little ones that experienced been in his care and custody, investigators reported.
The Jaguars introduced a statement in November, next Thompson’s conviction, thanking federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Workplace for their function on the case.
