Child Porn And Hacking NFL Scoreboards With Samuel Thompson – Act 2: Guns and CSAM

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 2: Guns And CSAM.

For the background, please see act 1:

• https://drkeithjones.com/index.php/2023/12/18/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 – 00:00:41:39
Keith
Hey. Hey, you crazy bastards. Welcome back to eCrimeBytes. This is where I researched the court documents and roast the criminals so you don’t have to. So you’re now jumping in an episode. This is season two, episode 22. We’re talking about Samuel Thompson. He hacks a Jumbotron for an NFL team, but he’s also really into child porn. And we got to kind of talk about both of them because those cases are kind of they intermingle with each other.

00:00:41:44 – 00:01:17:48
Keith
So act one, which was yesterday, what I brought to you was I talked about his background, that he was the Jumbotron whisperer of the Jacksonville Jaguars, which is an NFL team. And Samuel Thompson has been doing this for 30 years, but he had been doing it for the Jaguars from 2014 through 2018. Now, in 2018, there was this anonymous letter that popped up in the management of the Jacksonville Jaguars and it basically said, Hey, you need to look into the conviction background of Samuel Thompson.

00:01:17:53 – 00:01:43:43
Keith
And they did. He was convicted of child porn or molesting a child back in 1998. The letter says it was at a youth camp. I don’t know that to be true or not true. That’s just what the letter said. And he was convicted, which means in the terms of the story is he has to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life from 1998.

00:01:43:48 – 00:02:17:10
Keith
So when we’re talking about this case in 2014 through 2018, he should be a right you should be on the registry. Okay. There he well, he didn’t notify the Jaguars, so the Jaguars let him go. And because of that, I think there was some spite. And that spite led to Thompson installing remote software on the servers that control the Jumbotrons live during these NFL games.

00:02:17:15 – 00:02:39:02
Keith
And during three games of 2018, he messed with the Jumbotron and just kind of made it look glitchy and garbled. You couldn’t read it. You could obviously tell there was something wrong with it. And I showed you some pictures. Again, go back to that act if you want to see all the the background, the total time that the scoreboards were messed up was under 25 seconds total.

00:02:39:07 – 00:03:04:52
Keith
So not a ton of time, but enough that the Jaguars were not happy with him. So that’s where I last left you was the Jaguars put together this sting and they put this spare server that been sending these commands of messing up their Jumbotrons on its own network. And they sat there and they watched it and then on one football game, an IP address came in and connected to it.

00:03:04:52 – 00:03:32:23
Keith
And an IP address is just a computer numerical address to get on the Internet. They watch this computer come in and try to do the same thing on their Jumbotron and they said, Gotcha, bitch. And they looked up that IP address and it pointed to Samuel Thompson during the same amount of time. Samuel Thompson was also into child porn. So we know from an investigation later on that he was still on the dark web looking for child porn while he was hacking Jumbotrons.

00:03:32:28 – 00:03:57:13
Keith
So this guy was doing a lot of illegal stuff. So now I come into Act two, act who is called guns and CSAM. And CSAM stands for child sexual abuse material. If you join me with the last act, I gave you a warning that there’s going to be some child porn talk in here. I’m going to try to keep it as watered down as I can.

00:03:57:18 – 00:04:20:14
Keith
But there’s some pretty heinous stuff that he does in here. And it’s hard for me to even talk about. I don’t like this this subject material, but there’s really no way of talking about the Jumbotron without talking about the child porn because they kind of used it all together to convict him. So we’re going to talk about it, but I’m not going to talk into super deep details of it.

00:04:20:19 – 00:04:47:51
Keith
Okay. With that, I got to say, we’re going to get through this together. So if we’re going to brave this together, I apologize. Here we go. July 17th, 2019, there was a search warrant executed at Thomson’s house in Florida. And you can imagine they probably didn’t get there and find cupcakes and puppies. Right? They want to go there for evidence related to intentional access of a protected computer or computer network without authorization.

00:04:47:51 – 00:05:15:24
Keith
And that is legal speak for fucking around with the Jaguars’ Jumbotron. When the FBI went there, Thompson’s eight year old son opened the door. Now you can have two points of view about what I just said. Okay. Thompson’s point of view was, Holy fuck. My eight year old son opened the door to a to the FBI with guns out.

00:05:15:29 – 00:05:35:58
Keith
That’s pretty terrible. I looked at it like, Holy fuck, this guy’s got an eight year old son and he’s been convicted of all this child porn and molesting kids. Who knows what he probably does in his own house? That scared the hell out of me when I read that. So the FBI, they do a search of his place and they found a gun.

00:05:36:13 – 00:06:01:11
Keith
They found a Smith Wesson revolver model, 637, which was a 38 Smith Wesson special. That’s the bullet type. That gun was registered to Thompson’s wife. Her name was Jean Louise Duff, and her maiden name looked like it was Puckett. P U C K E T T. I know it was so close to fuck it. It was so hard for me not to crack a joke about it.

00:06:01:16 – 00:06:24:45
Keith
But anyways, so the FBI has this computer intrusion specialist hold on for this one Special Agent Julian Carl Slaughter. What a great name. I mean, Julian Slaughter could only ever either be a meat processor or a special agent of the FBI, and I think he chose the better choice here.

00:06:24:45 – 00:06:37:39
Keith
So in the search warrant, there’s a safe. And the FBI is like, Hey, you want to get us in the safe or should we just use our own methods to get into the safe?

00:06:37:44 – 00:06:52:16
Keith
Thompson says. I don’t have a I don’t have access to that safe. It’s got a gun in it. Hold on a second. I got I got a key over here that’ll open it, which blew my mind. Like, why would you say you don’t have access to it and then provide a key to this safe with a gun in it?

00:06:52:20 – 00:07:12:38
Keith
And if you’re wondering why this is important, remember, Thompson is a convicted felon. He’s not supposed to have guns in his control, and apparently he does because he knows where the key is. So then they go down this investigative route. They talked to Thompson’s wife and they say, hey, do you know how to open the safe? And she goes, No, I haven’t opened it in years.

00:07:12:43 – 00:07:35:15
Keith
I don’t even know how to open that thing. The gun was also in Thompson’s nightstand, not his wife’s and then there’s a report, and I don’t know how they know this if if his wife I think his wife told them during an interview. But basically somebody scared them late one night and Thompson actually pulled the gun out because they thought they might have to defend themselves.

00:07:35:20 – 00:08:07:02
Keith
So, really, this gun is under Thompson’s control is where I’m going with all this. So at the same time when they’re going in, they’re looking for Jumbotron shit and they find the gun and they go, You’re not supposed to have this, Thompson. They also start looking at digital devices because they’re looking for a hack, right? They start looking at log files from his iPhone, his iPad and his two laptops, and they see that they all use to access this spare server for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

00:08:07:02 – 00:08:45:52
Keith
So he’s fucked there, right along the way. On these personal devices, FBI finds child abuse, sexual abuse material or CSAM all over these devices, thousands of images, videos, young children. And he can’t even say, hey, I’m into like, it’s just nudist pictures. It’s young children being abused, bondage, torture and bestiality. So if you remember when I said at that that letter upfront, when I initially read it and I was like, I don’t know if Thompson deserves this.

00:08:45:52 – 00:09:08:49
Keith
I don’t I don’t know that much about him yet. When I start learning stuff like this, this is where I think, yeah, maybe this person really maybe they knew all this stuff and maybe this was warranted. But okay, so this is the worst part if this bothers you for fast forward about 2 minutes. All right, here we go.

00:09:08:54 – 00:09:48:50
Keith
The sexual abuse material included video and pictures that Thompson himself produced in June of 2019. So this is after the Jumbotron hacks. Depicting children under his care and custody. His voice can be heard speaking to the children at the beginning of these videos. And the video is taken in his living room. I, I just have to pause there because that’s just.

00:09:48:55 – 00:10:18:20
Keith
So the FBI, thank fuck are involved and they start doing investigation and they interview the three male children that have been in Thompson’s care since 2019. And it reveals that two of them children have been molested. He exposed himself to two of the children. So meaning Thompson exposed himself to the children, too. He exposed the children to other child abuse material.

00:10:18:25 – 00:10:43:53
Keith
He spoke to the children about sex and masturbation, and he and he encouraged the children to play a quote unquote game where the children were required to take off their clothes and run around his house. These children, seven, eight and ten years old at the time were playing this quote unquote game and Thompson recorded it and that’s child abuse material.

00:10:43:53 – 00:11:14:52
Keith
Now, he produced himself. Investigation of his devices also revealed that Thompson was actively searching actively on his iPad, searching for child porn at the moment the FBI came and knocked at his door. Talk about being caught fucking red handed. So this guy is looking for child porn. He’s receiving child porn. He’s producing child porn. He’s abusing children under his care.

00:11:14:52 – 00:11:19:09
Keith
He’s the worst of the worst, in my opinion.

00:11:21:34 – 00:11:38:45
Keith
So I do have a picture of Thompson’s house. Might as well put it in here. It’s a grainy picture. I apologize. I didn’t pull Google’s photo of it or anything like that. This is the court documents representation of what they’re searching. I just want to show you what they put in their documents as an example. This is his house.

00:11:38:45 – 00:12:03:04
Keith
This is pretty much unassuming, maybe middle class, upper middle class type of neighborhood and house that he lives in. So they searched it. They find all this stuff. And then at some point, I don’t know if they didn’t arrest them or what it was. But on July 27th of 2019, Thompson flees to the Philippines. And I’m thinking, What the fuck?

00:12:03:09 – 00:12:37:05
Keith
How the hell did he do it? Why was he allowed to take off and leave the country? I don’t know. He was apparently. So he when he got there, he was eventually arrested. The Philippine police arrested him. He was set back on January 31st of 2020. His passport was revoked because of this. And when he arrived, he was arrested by the FBI and then he was ordered detained pending trial.

00:12:37:05 – 00:13:00:34
Keith
Why? Because this fucker keeps trying to disappear to go to Philippines. Now, as always, two sides to a story. According to the court documentation, his lawyer said he was actually staying with his brother and checking in with the FBI while he was in the Philippines. Sounds like a pretty lame excuse, if you ask me, but could be true.

00:13:00:34 – 00:13:12:39
Keith
I guess. It seems weird that the FBI would be like, yeah, you can travel to your brother’s place in the Philippines where it’s much more difficult for us to arrest you if we ever have to. It seems like it’d be really weird the FBI be okay with that.

00:13:12:39 – 00:13:17:57
Keith
So on August 2nd of 2019, there was a complaint filed against Thompson.

00:13:18:02 – 00:13:44:57
Keith
There’s a charge in there of possessing a gun as convicted felon. And I thought really, that was it a gun charge? That’s all? Well, later on February 12th of 2020, so just a few months later, and then into the next year, government comes back, says, no, no, fuck that, fuck that, we’re going to change it. We have an indictment now, six counts on this one, and I’ll go through them with you.

00:13:45:02 – 00:14:11:44
Keith
One receiving child porn count, two causing damage to protected computers. That’d be the Jumbotron. Count three did not register he has been Bahamas trip since he was a sex offender. Count four was child porn. Count five was possessing a firearm by a felon in count six was he didn’t register his attempt to go to Korea and Philippines since he was a sex offender.

00:14:11:44 – 00:14:29:42
Keith
I didn’t talk about the Korea trip. He didn’t actually make that trip. He tried to go to Korea. I i it was either through Korea to the Philippines or the Korea was another trip. But basically that became a count because they said he tried to run.

00:14:29:42 – 00:14:33:32
Keith
Okay. So he’s you’re sitting there and you’re like that’s a pretty hefty indictment, right?

00:14:33:34 – 00:14:55:29
Keith
Six counts. Yeah, that’d be pretty scary coming out. You know, government went back was quiet for a little bit, came back February 22nd, 2023. So this is three years later. And they said, fuck that other indictment we talked about. We got another one, ten counts on this one. So I’ll go through the counts on this one. Count one is child porn, count two is child porn.

00:14:55:34 – 00:15:21:57
Keith
Count three is damage to a protected computer. I’m going to stop there. They could probably have a lot more child porn counts because he had thousands of images but I’ll continue. Count three is damage to a protected computer. That’s the Jumbotron. Count for creating child porn. So that’s being the producer of child porn. I highlighted that one. That to me was probably arguably one of the most difficult parts to read about this case.

00:15:22:02 – 00:16:00:13
Keith
Count five was felony with a minor. Count six, registered travel, I’m sorry, unregistered travel as a sex offender. Count seven, child porn. Count eight possessing a gun as a felon. Count nine child porn, count ten unregistered travel as a sex offender. All right. So, you know, the other side of the story is Thompsons lawyers complained in the court paperwork that what the FBI did was just way above and beyond.

00:16:00:13 – 00:16:22:02
Keith
And, my God, it traumatized his kid. I’m going to read you a quote out of the court paperwork here that says, the victim in this case is Mr. Thompson’s young son who is in therapy. He suffers from the psychological trauma of answering the door to an FBI entry team that is amplified by separation anxiety from being separated from his father.

00:16:22:07 – 00:16:43:09
Keith
We speak on the phone every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I ask the court pick any of those days and listen to a recorded jail phone call between a son who misses his father and a father who misses his son because a video board glitched for mere seconds during a football game. Motherfucker, you’re producing child porn under of children under your care.

00:16:43:09 – 00:17:03:56
Keith
And I don’t even know if this child is one of them. They didn’t specify in the court document. The ages kind of line up, so I kind of suspect it could be, but I don’t know. And you want to say the FBI executing a search warrant was the most traumatizing thing in this child’s life. Fuck you, Thompson.

00:17:03:56 – 00:17:39:39
Keith
Fuck you. All right, oh my God. All right, All right. We’re going to switch gears November six to November 17th. Thompson says I’m going to trial. And what’s more ludicrous is Thompson was allowed to represent himself in this process after a bunch of medical and competency evaluations. So the court really examined the shit out of him because this is a move that typically people will lose doing.

00:17:39:44 – 00:18:12:29
Keith
If you’re not a lawyer, even if you are a lawyer, you shouldn’t represent yourself because you’re it’s you want somebody detached. They can argue this for you. If you’re not a lawyer like Mr. Thompson here, he’s a Jumbotron whisperer. You shouldn’t represent yourself because you’re probably going to lose. It’s generally a bad idea. Okay. And that is why the court is going to do all those medical and competency evaluations, because later on, when you lose and you’re like, well, you’ll let me represent myself, they’re going to say, Yeah, but you were really, really sure and you were competent.

00:18:12:29 – 00:18:15:12
Keith
We we checked. So this is your fault, buddy.

00:18:15:12 – 00:18:58:16
Keith
So as you would expect, the jury finds Thompson guilty. So I’m going to read you what the United States attorney says here, because they said it better than I could, says United States Attorney Roger Handberg announces that a federal jury today found Samuel Arthur Thompson, age 53, of Saint Augustine, Florida, guilty of producing, receiving and possessing child sex abuse material, CSAM, producing CSAM while required to register as a sex offender, violating the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, sending unauthorized, damaging commands to a protected computer, which was the Jumbotron and possessing a firearm.

00:18:58:16 – 00:19:27:42
Keith
As a convicted felon, Thompson faces a minimum mandatory term of 35 years imprisonment. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 25th, 2024. Now, I’m recording this in December 2023, and this will be out just before the end of the year. So we don’t have the sentencing yet. And a lot of times these things take a while because they have to analyze the defendant to figure out how much to recommend for sentencing and so forth.

00:19:27:42 – 00:19:58:39
Keith
So some months can go by. When this happens, I will bring you an update because I’m really interested in what he walks away with, because this whole thing started because of a glitch in an NFL Jumbotron and it rolled into a guy that actually produced child sex abuse material. Just mind blowing. So that’s it. Thank Christ. That’s all the child abuse I have to talk about anymore.

00:19:58:39 – 00:20:36:12
Keith
I do not like this material, but it happens so much in computer crime that a lot there are times like this, it’s just almost impossible to talk around it. So and it’s important a lot of times to talk about it because it is so prevalent. So so final thoughts about this case. One is I don’t understand why he did the Jumbotron hack other than maybe it was some self-satisfaction for being let go or not having his contract renewed because they found out about his sex abuse history.

00:20:36:17 – 00:20:57:11
Keith
Another thing is, I was surprised to find this guy is still currently married. It sounds like, you know, the gun was hers and that kind of stuff. So with all the sex abuse material that was in the house, the gun that was in the house, the children that were abused under his care, in the house, I don’t feel bad for this lady.

00:20:57:22 – 00:21:26:34
Keith
I almost feel like she’s blind or maybe just turning away from it because it seems like this is a lot of child porn in this guy’s life for this lady to still be there. Most importantly, I cannot believe this guy has young kids still living at home when it was in the court paperwork this guy’s eight year old son open the door to the FBI entry team for the search warrant.

00:21:26:39 – 00:21:53:59
Keith
In recent times. I was like, this is not 1998 where he’s in control of an eight year old. It’s now. I cannot believe he still has young kids in his home. And the last thing was this is probably the first case I can remember where I’ve covered under eCrimeBytes that there was a child porn producer. I would say far worse than consumers.

00:21:53:59 – 00:22:19:04
Keith
Consumers are bad, but the producers are making the material that the consumers are finding and so this guy just to me, it just feels like the worst of the worst, even out of our cyber stalkers and everything else. This this guy just he’s now I’m going to have to there’s going to be a Thompson scale on things, I think, because a child porn producer, in my opinion, is the worst of the worst

00:22:19:04 – 00:22:51:20
Keith
of digital crimes. So with that, I will be awaiting his sentencing. If it’s a minimum of 35 years, I hope it’s far above that. Minimum 35 years is pretty stiff. So I would say that’s a good start for what he has done in this case. 35 years is a good start. So if there’s anything you liked in this episode, please like subscribe, thumbs up, follow whatever the positive affirmation things are on the platform that you’re ingesting me on, please do.

00:22:51:20 – 00:23:08:41
Keith
It helps me out a ton. It just helps me get more viewers and things like that. It’s the single most important thing you could do to help me out If you if you like this material, If you don’t like this material, fuck you. No, I’m just. I’m just kidding. Hey, it’s not for everybody. The definitely this child porn stuff.

00:23:08:46 – 00:23:34:57
Keith
Definitely not for everybody. And I couldn’t unwind it. In this case. I really was interested in the Jumbotron hack. But he was caught with everything else, and it was just important. So if you haven’t been to our Web site, please go there. It’s eCrimeBytes. It’s e c r i m e b y t e s spelled the computer way b y y as in yellow milk t e s dot com.

00:23:34:57 – 00:23:55:41
Keith
And if you’re wondering why, I’m saying y as in yellow milk, my God. You’ve got to go back and watch our prior episodes where I talked about frozen yellow milk. The It’s good. It’s good. Just trust me. And now this is the time where I’m going to give you a preview of next week. Next week we’ve got kind of an offshoot.

00:23:55:54 – 00:24:27:46
Keith
We’ve got Hacking Hospitals with Vikas Singla, and I hope I pronounced that right. Well, that was my best shot. This is a health care one where you have a security expert hacking who his clients were and who his potential clients are. So, you know, it’s supposed to be the protector of the cybersecurity industry. You know, somebody like myself that works in the industry and supposed to be protecting companies like this.

00:24:27:51 – 00:24:40:09
Keith
He attacked them. And it’s a very interesting story. And I hope you come back next week and you join me on that one. So thanks again for sticking around this long on this one. I know it was difficult to get through and I hope to see you next week. Thanks. Bye.