Former Roommate of Accused Capital One Hacker Sentenced

SEATTLE — The former roommate of a woman accused of hacking Capital One banking company and at least 30 other organizations has been sentenced to four years in prison for illegally possessing firearms, according to federal prosecutors.

Park Quan, 67, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of guns, according to U.S. Attorney Brian Moran.

Quan has been in custody since his arrest and plea in June. In imposing the four-year sentence, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said he was taking into account Quan’s age and health issues that were diagnosed while he was in prison.

Quan was sharing a home with Paige Thompson in July 2019 when FBI agents searched the home and discovered a cache of weapons. Thompson was being investigated for data theft. She has been charged with wire fraud and computer fraud and abuse and has pleaded not guilty.

The cache of weapons included four semi-automatic handguns, six semi-automatic rifles, and two additional rifles, Moran said.

At least one of the semi-automatic rifles was loaded. Officials also seized ammunition, high-capacity magazines, flare launchers, containers of explosive powder, and two bump stocks, which Quan claimed to have purchased before the devices were outlawed.

Quan has a 1983 federal conviction in Washington for being a felon in possession of explosives and a 1991 federal conviction in Texas for possessing an unregistered machine gun. Those convictions mean Quan is prohibited from possessing firearms.

During the search, Thompson, 33, was arrested and charged with accessing personal information of 106 million Capital One credit card holders.

Prosecutors said Thompson, a former Amazon software engineer who went by the online alias “erratic,” has a history of stalking and threatening to kill people and to get herself killed by police. And police in Mountain View, California, said she also threatened to shoot up an undisclosed company while she was living with Quan.

Thompson’s lawyers have denied those accusations and have said she is not violent.

Capital One said 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers were obtained in the hack. The breach was among the largest on record involving a major U.S. financial institution.

Her trail was set for November but last week it was moved to Feb. 8, 2021.