The Capital One hacking suspect recently threatened to “shoot up” a social media company, according to a report.
Paige Thompson, 33, made the threat against the unidentified company in May and it reported it to Seattle police, CBS News reported, citing federal court papers filed Wednesday night.
The former Amazon software engineer — who went by the online handle “Erratic” — was collared by the FBI on Monday for allegedly obtaining personal information from more than 100 million Capital One credit applications.
In the massive data breach, she allegedly obtained about 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers — though there is no evidence the material was sold or distributed to others.
Thompson is in federal custody pending an Aug. 15 detention hearing. Her public defender, Mohammad Hamoudi, did not return an emailed request for comment from the Associated Press.
Unlike most hackers, Thompson did little to cover her tracks, and her online behavior suggested she may have been expecting to get caught.
More than six weeks before she was caught, Thompson had discussed the Capital One mega-hack in online chats and in a group she created on the Slack messaging service.
Thompson held six jobs briefly at organizations such as ATG Stores, Onvia and Zion Preparatory Academy before joining Amazon in 2015 to work at Amazon Web Services, a division that hosted the Capital One data she allegedly accessed illegally starting in March.
When Thompson left Amazon in 2016, she lost her apartment and moved into a group home, which FBI agents searched.
The feds also detained the owner, a convicted felon, for illegal possession of firearms when they found a stash of guns, including assault rifles, on the property.
Friends and associates described Thompson, who was open about her struggles as a transgender woman, as a skilled programmer and software architect whose career and behavior mirrored her online handle.
“She had a habit of openly struggling with her state of mind in public channels,” said online pal Aife Dunne. “It’s where her screen name comes from.”
Thompson made many friends online but also alienated many local hackers as she dominated chats on her favorite channel on Internet Relay Chat, a hacker mainstay, and in the Slack group she created.
She openly discussed the Capital One hack with friends and associates online beginning in mid-June. In April, she created the group “Seattle Warez Kiddies” on the site Meetup.
Friends told the AP they didn’t believe she had carried out the hack with malicious intent or for profit.
They said they believed the unemployed and depressed woman believed the hack could bring her attention, respect and a new job.
Paige ThompsonTwitter“I think she wanted to release all of this responsibly but she didn’t know how to do it,” said Aleyna Vaughan, 36, a friend who said she had exchanged texts with Thompson almost every day for the past two years.
Sarah Stensberg said she and her husband, Kevin, sometimes took Thompson to a Seattle hospital for mental treatment.
“We’d get her into inpatient treatment, we’d visit her, and she’d seem to be doing well,” Stensberg told AP. “Then she’d go off the deep end. We couldn’t deal with it anymore.”
The couple eventually cut ties with Thompson in 2011 because of her abusive behavior, but she continued to stalk and harass them until they moved to get away, Stensberg said.
The couple said Thompson used geolocation tracking from online postings to find their new home. Last fall, the couple obtained orders of protection against Thompson.
In the Slack group, Thompson wrote in June that she was seeing a therapist.
“Never a moment in which my mind can just be free,” she wrote. After noting that she regretted her hacks and harassment of others, she wrote, “it (expletive) pisses me off, it pisses me off even more that im not in jail.”
Thompson said in chats that she had been transitioning to a woman since age 22 with hormone treatment.
She wrote on the Slack group that her gender transition might have contributed to her mental anguish and she often mentioned her use of legal and illegal drugs online.
Thompson also discussed suicide.
“Ive tried to kill myself a few times,” Thompson wrote on IRC on April 19, 2018. “I cant do it.”




