Accused Capital One Hacker, a Trans Woman, Sharing Cell With Man

(Bloomberg) -- The Seattle woman accused of hacking into Capital One Financial Corp.’s cloud is sharing a jail cell with a former male housemate who was arrested on weapons charges, an unusual arrangement that prison officials agreed to because she is transgender.

Paige A. Thompson, 33, is charged with stealing the personal information of 100 million Capital One customers. She’s being held in a male unit under federal Bureau of Prisons policy, which rarely allows transgender inmates to be housed based on their gender identity, prosecutors said in a court filing Thursday.

The prison near Seattle–Tacoma International Airport “has taken the unusual step of placing Thompson in a cell with her former housemate, Park Quan, with whom Thompson has expressed a preference for sharing a cell,” prosecutors said in the filing Thursday.

Her lawyers have argued that as a transgender woman, Thompson faces “inevitable threats to her bodily safety” and keeping her in jail only increases her risk of assault and jeopardizes her health.

A bail hearing is scheduled for Friday in Seattle, where a judge will weigh arguments from both sides.

The government is challenging Thompson’s request to be released and cited the cellmate accommodation as evidence that she’s being treated fairly in prison. The U.S. also said Thompson has had access to psychologists as well as medications she needs for her transgender status.

Flight Risk

Prosecutors say Thompson is a flight risk because she faces as long as 12 years behind bars even if she were to plead guilty. They said her conviction is “near certain,” and that the sentence will be based on a loss amount of at least $100 million -- the amount that Capital One has set aside to cover costs during the next five months alone.

“Of course, Thompson’s actual sentencing range likely will be significantly higher,” the U.S. said.

When authorities searched Thompson’s house last month, they found a stash of weapons allegedly belonging to Quan, who is barred from owning firearms because he’s a convicted felon. The stash included ammunition, explosive material, assault rifles and a sniper rifle, the U.S. said.

The judge overseeing Quan’s case denied him bail, finding he is a danger to the community “due to his ability to obtain and stockpile weapons.”

Quan’s lawyer, Kevin Peck, said his client looks forward to demonstrating that he’s not guilty.

Thompson housemate-turned-cellmate was first convicted in the early 1970s when he was in the military and attempted to steal weapons, according to court filings. He was convicted again in the 1980s in a “murder for hire” plot involving a botched truck bomb, the U.S. said. In that case, Quan cooperated and was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser crime.

Prosecutors have cited Thompson’s proximity to Quan’s alleged “arsenal” as evidence that she had the ability to carry out various threats she made in recent years, including to kill police officers and “shoot up” a social media company in California.

Thompson’s federal public defender plans to argue for her to be released to a halfway house with a GPS monitor at the hearing Friday. Thompson isn’t a flight risk, has cooperated with police in the past and is “in dire need of placement at a halfway house,” Mohammad Ali Hamoudi said in a filing Tuesday.

The case is U.S. v. Thompson, 2:19-mj-00344, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington (Seattle).

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Peter Blumberg

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