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 not renewing his contract after the Jacksonville Jaguars learned of it contract, invaded the big screen at Jaguars Stadium in Jacksonville. He is a registered sex offender.
U.S. District Judge Brian J. Davis sentenced Samuel Arthur Thompson, 53, on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida said in a news release. A federal jury convicted Thompson in November 2023 of producing child sexual abuse material while required to register as a sex offender, violating the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), and being a convicted felon Possession of firearms.
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 a news release that Thompson was hired by the Jaguars around 2013 to help design and install the stadium’s main screen and then was responsible for running it on game days.
“Thompson’s contract with the Jaguars required him to report his conviction, but he failed to do so. In January 2018, the Jaguars decided to no longer engage with Thompson after learning of his conviction and status as a registered sex offender. Renewed contract,” the press release reads. “Before Thompson’s contract expired in March 2018, Thompson installed remote access software on a backup server in the Jaguars’ server room. Subsequently, Thompson remotely accessed the control system for three games during the 2018 NFL season. screen of the computer, causing the video board to malfunction repeatedly.”
The Jaguars eventually found a backup server and during the next game in December 2018, they captured the IP address of the intruder who was trying to remotely control the big screen. According to the news release, the FBI traced the intruder’s IP address to Thompson’s residence.
In July 2019, the FBI searched Thompson’s home and seized his computers and firearms that he was prohibited from possessing as a convicted felon. The FBI discovered files on Thompson’s devices showing they were used to remotely access backup servers, as well as thousands of images and hundreds of videos depicting child sexual abuse material, according to the news release.
“Samuel Thompson repeatedly abused and exploited innocent children, causing immeasurable harm to his victims,” FBI Jacksonville Acting Special Agent in Charge Kurt Makovsky said in a statement. “He also abused and exploited his employers by installing malware to manipulate their systems, which could have caused much greater damage if undetected.”
The Jaguars thanked prosecutors for their work on the case in a statement released in November after Thompson was convicted.
(Photo: Perrinoz/Getty Images)
