A former Jacksonville Jaguars employee has been sentenced to 220 years in prison for producing child sexual abuse material and hacking the team's stadium jumbotron. The employee, identified as Samuel Thompson, was hired by the team in 2013 as a contractor to work on the video board network and operate the jumbotron on game days.
Thompson's contract was not renewed in 2018 after the team discovered he was a registered sex offender with a prior conviction for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Alabama in 1998. Before his employment ended, Thompson installed remote access software on a spare server in the Jaguars' server room, allowing him to access the jumbotron's computers during three games in the following season, causing malfunctions.
The Jaguars eventually removed the spare server's access to the jumbotron and traced the network information to Thompson's home, leading to an FBI search warrant in July 2019. During the raid, agents seized electronic devices containing thousands of images and hundreds of videos of child sexual abuse, some of which Thompson had produced shortly before the raid.
Thompson was convicted of multiple charges, including producing, receiving, and possessing child sexual abuse material, violating the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. This incident follows another former employee being sentenced to six years in jail for embezzling over $20 million from the team to fund a lavish lifestyle.
