The Jacksonville Jaguars have been hard at work trying to upgrade their team this offseason after their shocking collapse in 2023, but they have recently had a disturbing off-field incident come to light that has caught the attention of fans everywhere. On Tuesday night, it was revealed that a former employee of the team who was a registered sex offender had been sentenced to 220 years in prison for a bevy of crimes committed.
Samuel Arthur Thompson, who was an employee of the Jaguars from 2013 to 2018, was initially convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Alabama in 1998. Once the team found out about this, they quickly cut ties with Thompson.
The problem was that Thompson installed remote access software on a spare server that allowed him to operate the jumbotron at EverBank Stadium, and he used that power to access the jumbotron three times throughout the 2018 season, continually causing it to malfunction.
Jacksonville eventually found out about Thompson's setup, and traced the server back to him. The FBI executed a search warrant at Thompson's residence, and promptly found thousands of images and videos of child sexual abuse on his devices, in addition to his software that he was using to control the jumbotron, and a firearm that he was prohibited from owning. As a result, Thompson was sentenced to 220 years in prison for his laundry list of disgusting crimes.
“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. A federal judge in Jacksonville sentenced Samuel Arthur Thompson, of St. Augustine, on Monday, according to court records. He 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.” – ESPN
The Jaguars released a statement thanking the folks involved in the case for their work, and it's safe to say that the actions committed by Thompson are quite horrific. With this situation now in the rearview mirror, the Jags will be looking to turn their attention back to their offseason work, and hopefully, they will be able to avoid getting tangled up in this sort of situation again in the future.
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