Join me to hear the story of Samuel Thompson, the Jacksonville Jaguars Jumbotron hacker and child porn producer. This is eCrimeBytes.com Season 2 Episode 22 – Child Porn And Hacking NFL Scoreboards With Samuel Thompson – Act 1: The Jumbotron Whisperer.
Sources:
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16864645/united-states-v-thompson/
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/st-augustine-serial-child-molester-convicted-hacking-jumbotron-child-exploitation
- https://offender.fdle.state.fl.us/offender/sops/flyer.jsf?personId=28774
- https://www.wokv.com/news/local/sex-offender-found-guilty-hacking-jacksonville-jaguars-scoreboard-child-exploitation-offenses/3JSWRF24DBGALCQWS63OK54SCE/
Transcript:
00:00:10:00 – 00:00:37:58
Keith
Hey. Hey, you crazy bastards! Welcome to this week’s episode of eCrimeBytes. This is where I research the court paperwork and roast the criminals so you don’t have to. This week I’m bringing you season two, Episode 22. This is child porn and hacking NFL scoreboards with Samuel Thompson. And I know a few episodes ago I said something along the lines of I don’t pick too many child porn cases.
00:00:38:03 – 00:00:59:32
Keith
This is one of those cases where I couldn’t unwind the child porn from the hack. So you’re going to hear about both of them. This is probably going to be one of our more sensitive cases. So I understand if the subject material isn’t for you, I have a bunch of episodes without child porn in it. If you want to skip around another one, I totally understand. If you’re going to stick with me.,
00:00:59:37 – 00:01:23:45
Keith
I appreciate it. We’re going to get through this together because I am not a fan of this subject material either. So let’s just let’s just get through it and do it. All right? So the criminal in this case, his name is Samuel Thompson, and he did several things. One is he caused damage to a protected computer. And that’s kind of a legal way of saying a computer in the United States on the Internet.
00:01:23:50 – 00:01:55:12
Keith
There’s some gunplay involved and, you know, gunplay. I mean, that’s we had a whole episode on that a few episodes ago. And child porn. So he’s going to be receiving child porn, but also producing child porn. Pretty horrible. Okay. The victims in this case it’s going to be several children, including children in Samuel Thompson’s care. And then on the other side of this, the hack part, it’s the Jacksonville Jaguars, an NFL team.
00:01:55:27 – 00:02:10:14
Keith
So if you’re from the outside U.S. and you don’t understand American football, just know it’s a professional sports team and they have a big scoreboard. And on this or this scoreboard is something that Samuel Thompson has control of through his job normally.
00:02:10:14 – 00:02:16:43
Keith
The other technologies we’re going to talk about other than the scoreboard is remote access software. So we’ll be talking about Teamviewer.
00:02:16:45 – 00:02:37:22
Keith
It’s an application to do this. And we’re gonna talk about cell phones, iPads. This is your standard devices that everybody pretty much has nowadays. And why did I pick this case? Well, I was fascinated by the scoreboard hack. I hadn’t heard of anything like this before, so I thought it might be an interesting thing to make into an episode.
00:02:37:27 – 00:02:56:10
Keith
I don’t see what he stood to gain from this. So what I’m telling you about this crime. Try to think about that, because I still can’t put my finger on what it was he gained other than maybe, you know, he just did it out of spite. But there is a whole bunch of child porn stuff that gets wrapped up into this whole investigation that we’re going to talk about, too.
00:02:56:10 – 00:03:23:45
Keith
So do know we’re going to have a couple of different subject areas we’re going to be talking about in this episode. So you were watching act number one of this episode. This is called the Jumbotron Whisperer, and that’s Samuel Thompson. Because, well, before I get into this whole Jumbotron thing, let me back up for a second, because I have to give you a little bit of background before we even talk about Jumbotrons.
00:03:23:50 – 00:03:49:51
Keith
So if we back up to 1998. Okay, So long time ago, right? Over 20 years ago, Samuel Thompson was convicted on March 22nd of 1998. Sexual abuse in the second degree and sodomy in the second degree in Mobile, Alabama, of a 14 year old child.
00:03:49:56 – 00:04:11:55
Keith
Because of this, he’s permanently registered as a sex offender. So the rest of his life, he should be on the sex offender list. Just have that in your mind at this point, because this is important to the digital case later on. There’s not much other information about this case at all that I could find other than this, that he was convicted and it involved a child.
00:04:11:55 – 00:04:39:16
Keith
It didn’t say if it was a child in his care or what it is. We’re going to get some information later on based upon a letter that pops up that might explain a little bit of this. But I don’t know that the letter is totally true either. So I’m telling you this because some employers, when you apply for a job and or get accepted for a job, sometimes you agree to some conditions, you know, some of the conditions might be things like drug testing.
00:04:39:20 – 00:05:10:58
Keith
Well, some employers will require you to report this type of information, A, that you might be a convict and B this type of convict with the sex crimes. Okay. So I put a picture on your screen right now. This is Samuel Thompson, and I used this picture in our thumbnail because, well, I’m not a fan of using grainy pictures, but for this fucker I did because he does some pretty heinous stuff throughout this whole case.
00:05:10:58 – 00:05:33:54
Keith
And I was like, this guy’s picture needs to be on the thumbnail so people can see who he is. This is his sexual offender profile in Florida. You can go to it, it’s public and it just, you know, it shows his picture and where he is. And, you know, he says he’s five five in 180lbs. So kind of short and stocky.
00:05:33:54 – 00:06:08:34
Keith
All right. So Jumbotrons, that’s the story here we’re talking about on the digital side. Well, half of the digital side. So as a job for his livelihood, Samuel Thompson was a television director and video engineer for over 30 years. So it’s not just something he just got into. He’s been doing this his whole life. And from 2014 through 2018, Thompson was engaged by the Jacksonville Jaguars, which is that football team that I told you about earlier.
00:06:08:39 – 00:06:30:50
Keith
So he is working for them as a video production and engineering consultant. His primary responsibility is to take care or design, install, operate, take care of that big thing you see in the end zone called the Jumbotron. Okay. That’s the thing that he takes care of on a daily basis for his job.
00:06:30:50 – 00:06:37:17
Keith
Now, in 2013, he was hired.
00:06:37:17 – 00:07:03:40
Keith
Okay. He was hired to operate this Jumbotron and he does it on game days. And he’d been working there for a while, so at least five years. So if he was just hired there in 2013 and now in 2018, five years later, he has a contract, right, that has to be renewed to continue working there. Well, in 2018, the Jaguars said, Nope, we’re not going to renew this anymore.
00:07:03:45 – 00:07:26:09
Keith
We found out that you are a convicted registered sex offender and didn’t tell us about it. And I wondered how they found out about that because I was thinking he’s been working. He probably been working there for a while. They probably should have done the investigation. They must have missed it if it was important. Right. So at this point, it became important.
00:07:26:09 – 00:07:47:44
Keith
And they didn’t renew his contract. Come to find out, they found out not because of their investigation. It sounds like somebody was pissed off at Samuel Thompson and sent this anonymous letter to the management talking all about what Samuel Thompson did. And I have the letter. I’m going to pop it up on the screen for you, for the people watching the video.
00:07:47:49 – 00:08:13:34
Keith
It’s pretty long. I’m going to try to read through this and I apologize if I stumble because it’s just it’s hard to read these things. So here we go. It says enough is enough. It is time for him to go. Samuel Thompson, a.k.a Sam Adams is a vile human being and needs to be fired immediately. One would think that with his reputation and record that he would have worked all these years to become a better person.
00:08:13:39 – 00:08:39:41
Keith
Clearly he has not, and we are sick and tired of his behavior. Let’s put Sam’s personal and character into perspective. If you haven’t already been made aware. In 1998, back in his beloved home state of Alabama, Sam sodomized a 15 year old boy while attending church youth camp. I’m going to pause there. That’s the most information that I got about that whole conviction was this letter.
00:08:39:41 – 00:08:52:27
Keith
That’s what I was referring to earlier. So it sounds like in a church youth camp, he did something he shouldn’t have done, according to this anonymous letter, which could or could not be true. Who knows? I’m going to continue now,
00:08:52:27 – 00:09:05:57
Keith
Sam is a convicted sexual predator. Why and how long ago did Sam decide to move to Jacksonville, which is a different Florida or I’m sorry, it’s a different state, which is Florida for those of you outside of the United States.
00:09:06:01 – 00:09:18:27
Keith
To learn more, simply go to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office website and look him up on the register. That was the picture that I just showed you of his sex offender profile.
00:09:18:27 – 00:09:46:29
Keith
We are sure it would send chills up any parent’s spine to know this animal was calling the shots of their kids up on the Jumbotron. Ask privately any employee who works with or has ever worked with Sam and they really what they really think of him. Ask them how he has treated them, how he has always talked down to everyone, ask about how it’s never Sam’s fault when something is wrong, ask about the inappropriate language he uses on a daily basis.
00:09:46:34 – 00:10:05:26
Keith
Asked the truth about what happened to Camera seven, ask about everything was Sam is my me and mine. The way he talks you would think he’d own the team. Sam is not a team player and his past shows he has never been a team player. Sam is not even a director. Look closer and you’ll see he does a horrible job at it.
00:10:05:26 – 00:10:28:43
Keith
And imagine the possibilities if we had a real director instead of just a loud mouth. Apart from his short lived, NASA gig, what are Sam’s directing credentials? Maybe even look a little closer into how Sam snaked his way into that NASA gig, and he might find even more evidence of Sam Shady. I have to stop there. I do underline that Sam Shady.
00:10:28:43 – 00:10:51:37
Keith
What the fuck was that? All right. he quoted Eminem, man. That’s awesome. All right, so then it continues. It says it’s a total and complete travesty that a group of so many had have had to remain silent out of fear of losing one’s job if they spoke up against this menace. Is there a hidden reason Sam got to where he is?
00:10:51:42 – 00:11:18:14
Keith
The corporation would allow this to happen? You in upper management have already given us doubts as to whether our individual voices would be respectfully heard. So now we’re being forced to take greater measures if this letter isn’t taken seriously. Even a rookie investigative reporter wouldn’t find it difficult to discover the dirty dealings of this little man. It is a shame that more time was spent keeping this letter anonymous than was spent composing it.
00:11:18:19 – 00:11:37:10
Keith
We do not need proper grammar to show you what’s right in your faces. We tried being nice about it and Sam barely received the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. In this day and age, with so many people coming out and saying Me Too, do we really want Sam to tarnish what the team has accomplished? We do not.
00:11:37:14 – 00:12:01:04
Keith
We only want a real director that is is as good as our team aspires to be and as good as our fans and city deserves. We want someone who inspires us to do the best we can. Not a sexual predator who is constantly who constantly berates us and makes us feel uncomfortable to be around. We need a leader who understands what it is to be a team member and who is not only in it for himself.
00:12:01:09 – 00:12:20:31
Keith
Our team deserves it. This is truly a good versus evil moment in our history. How will you handle this? It’s now up to you to do the right thing. I read that and I was like, Wow, someone really had an ax to grind against Samuel Thompson. And if you read that and you don’t know that much about Samuel Thompson, you probably go, I wonder if he deserves that.
00:12:20:35 – 00:12:46:11
Keith
Well, I’m going to answer that question for you if you hang on to the end of this episode. So you can imagine Jaguars get this letter and it sounds like from this letter, this is probably not the first time the Jaguars have been contacted about Sam. If I read between the lines here. So it sounds like this is a letter, not the first letter that the Jacksonville Jaguars have gotten about Sam.
00:12:46:11 – 00:13:02:46
Keith
So now they really know that he’s a sexual offender. And at this point they decided not to renew his contract. I imagine it’s probably just less drama to not deal with him at this point and not renew his contract. Even if you don’t want to deal with the sexual offender part of it.
00:13:02:46 – 00:13:25:24
Keith
So before his contract officially expired, it ended in March of 2018, Thompson installed a remote access software on a spare server in the Jaguars server room, so that application in that the court paperwork said he installed was called Teamviewer.
00:13:25:29 – 00:13:49:46
Keith
Also, it specified that he had a he had it installed so logging was turned off. Okay. So usually that’s somebody who doesn’t want to get caught. Now, I thought this was kind of interesting, his username to log in. It wasn’t something like, you know, Bigfoot or, you know, coming to get you or something that doesn’t identify a person.
00:13:49:51 – 00:14:17:22
Keith
It’s actually Sam and the number seven, you know, if he’s going to use this thing for bad purposes, I don’t know why he would use his name, but he did. So at the point where he’s not contracted anymore, he gets back in using this connection and he remotely access the computers that control the Jumbotrons during three 2018 NFL games.
00:14:17:27 – 00:14:33:42
Keith
And it caused these boards to repeatedly malfunction. And when I read this and initially I was like, my God, they must have freaked out. It must, you know, messed all this up. They didn’t have scoreboards for the whole game. Well, no, I actually have pictures. And I actually know a little bit about this because they put it in the court paperwork.
00:14:33:44 – 00:15:01:50
Keith
So the dates that this happened, if you’re curious, is September 16th, November 18th and December 2nd of 2018. And if you add up all three of those events, the Jumbotron events, and you add that time together, the total duration was less than 25 seconds. So it sounded like it kind of looked like a glitch. And there are some pictures here in the court paperwork that I’m gonna show our video viewers.
00:15:01:54 – 00:15:32:13
Keith
Here’s the first one. It just I don’t know how to explain it. It’s it’s got the bottom half of the screen, the ref in the middle and then kind of like scoreboards on the right, the left side of him and then the upper half, it kind of looks like glitchy, garbled stuff. And maybe a time like the, you know, says 14 colon and 38 colon and 39. It says Jax probably meaning Jacksonville.
00:15:32:18 – 00:15:52:37
Keith
And then it’s got this like graph that sort of looks like a system graph on the left hand side. Really hard to tell what this thing is. The other one that I have for you is this image and this is split sort of like the other one in the middle of the scoreboard. You got the same stuff across the top that sort of looks like system graph stuff.
00:15:52:42 – 00:16:13:24
Keith
And then, you know, under it’s the glitchy stuff and then it looks like segmented pictures that you’d expect on a Jumbotron on the bottom. It’s definitely not a coherent picture. It’s not something you look at and go, Hey, that Jumbotron is working. You’d look at it and go, Somebody messed up in the control booth. And this is the third picture, probably a little worse than the other two.
00:16:13:29 – 00:16:35:18
Keith
The top is a little better. And here you can actually see a couple of players, but you still see that system graph of some sort. And then the bottom is really glitchy. I mean, it’s just green and it’s got lines. You can’t tell what the hell it’s supposed to be. So I can imagine anybody at the NFL level and the money they spend, they probably flipped the fuck out and was like, What the hell happened?
00:16:35:18 – 00:17:02:18
Keith
At least we want some kind of explanation. Even if it’s just a malfunction. Well, what they did is they started looking at these servers because that’s what controls them. And then they said, Hey, there’s something shady going on here. And they said, Let’s do an investigation. And they perform this thing that they called a sting. And they basically they took the server that controls the Jumbotron that I was telling you about earlier.
00:17:02:18 – 00:17:33:41
Keith
And then December 16th, 2018, they put it on its own network and removed access from everywhere else except Teamviewer. And then they went into the game. So during the next NFL game, guess what happens? That spare server gets access through Teamviewer. I imagine with the Sam7 account. So he’s not really hiding himself. And then it sends commands to the Jumbotron to make it look like that ugly set of pictures that I just showed you.
00:17:33:46 – 00:17:49:06
Keith
So that happened again. And this time they caught it because it was the only access that could come in across Teamviewer. So they got the IP address that came across. And when the FBI traced the IP address, it went to Thompson’s residence. So now they know who it is.
00:17:49:06 – 00:17:56:57
Keith
Okay. So kind of a separate event, but very important to the story still.
00:17:57:02 – 00:18:34:52
Keith
July six to the 14th of 2019. So several months after these hacks, the next year in 2019, Thompson traveled to the Bahamas on a work trip. Okay. During that time and when he did, he came back. And on the next day in the U.S., registered as a sex offender. But he failed to report the trip he just took. Like literally just took and arrived back in the U.S. He didn’t report it when he registered as a sex offender. That is bad.
00:18:34:52 – 00:19:06:31
Keith
He’s supposed to do that according to the rules of what I read. So that was an offense right there. So right there, that’s arrestable offense. That same day later on when they did an investigation, they found that that same day Thompson also received CSAM which is child sexual abuse material via the dark Web. Remember earlier when I was talking about that letter and I was like, I don’t know if Thompson deserved it when I originally read it, this is where we’re going to start learning about the other stuff he did.
00:19:06:31 – 00:19:12:38
Keith
And then by the end of kind of like, yeah, I can kind of see why someone would be upset working with this guy.
00:19:12:38 – 00:19:23:26
Keith
I left you with him committing another crime of not registering that he just went to the Bahamas when he came back and register as a sex offender. And now he has child sex abuse material again.
00:19:23:41 – 00:19:48:59
Keith
And I have to pause here because we’re done with Act One and we’re ready for Act two, which will come tomorrow. So if there’s anything you liked in this act, please, like subscribe, thumbs up, follow whatever it is that the positive affirmation thing is and the platform that you’re ingesting me on. And with that, I hope you do come back tomorrow because we’re going to talk about a bunch more stuff.
00:19:49:04 – 00:20:09:06
Keith
We talk we’re going to talk about the investigation and the Jumbotron hack. But we’re gonna also talk about the fact that Samuel Thompson has guns, which is against that sexual abuse conviction we talked about 1998 and then we’re going to talk about some more child abuse material that is found on him in addition to the hack that he did.
00:20:09:06 – 00:20:21:49
Keith
So this whole next act, we’re going to be outlining what it is he did and how he was caught and how he’s going to be punished. So I hope you come back tomorrow and catch me then. Thanks. Bye.
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