Ex-Jaguars employee who hacked into scoreboard sentenced to 220 years in jail for child sex abuse material

After creating content about child sexual assault and breaking into the team’s stadium’s jumbotron, a former Jacksonville Jaguars employee was given a 220 year jail sentence.

According to investigators, the team employed St. Augustine resident Samuel Thompson as a contractor in 2013 to provide advice on the layout and setup of their new video board network and subsequently run the jumbotron during games.

However, they decided not to renew his contract in 2018 after discovering that he was a registered sex offender with a past conviction. Court documents state that in 1998, Thompson was found guilty in Alabama of sexually abusing a fourteen-year-old child.

Before his job with the Jaguars ended in March 2018, Thompson is said to have placed remote access software on a spare server in the team’s server room. The following season, he gained access to the computers that managed the jumobtron during three games, which resulted in frequent malfunctions with the video boards.

Prosecutors claimed that once the Jaguars located the backup server and blocked its connection to the jumbotron, they were able to gather network data that the FBI linked to Thompson’s residence.

According to log data, the FBI searched Thompson’s home in July 2019 and found a phone, a tablet, and two laptops that had all been used to access the spare jumbotron server. Agents said they also found a gun, which Thompson was not allowed to have because he was a convicted criminal.

On the devices, however, the FBI also discovered hundreds of films and thousands of pictures of child sexual assault during that raid. Investigators added that among the files were pictures and films that Thompson had created a month prior to the search of his house, showing kids who had been under his supervision.

This comes amid another former employee being sentenced to six years in jail after stealing over $20 million from the team through the company’s credit card program to fund a lavish lifestyle that included online gambling, chartering private jets, the purchase of a private condominium, sports memorabilia, cars, spa treatments and other personal purchases.