Jacob Thompson: $20 Gets You A Tat And Minor Surgery (Allegedly)

By John Nova Lomax Fri., Oct. 22 2010 at 6:01 AM

Categories: Crime

Jacob Thompson: The doctor is in

Not many of us would confuse James "Jacob" Thompson with a medical doctor, but to an unidentified 16-year-old East Texas woman, the fact that the Groveton man was something of a tattoo artist was qualification enough for her to ask him to perform minor surgery.

According to a report in the Lufkin Daily News, an Angelina County arrest affidavit has it that the 22-year-old "Doctor" Thompson's operating theater was a house party

In what we are sure was a sterile and sedate environment in the East Texas Piney Woods, last week the girl marshaled all the wisdom her teenaged mind could muster and decided to pay Thompson $20 to not only give her a tattoo at a party, but also, while ol' Doogie Howser was at it, he could surgically remove that pesky birth control implant from her arm too.

That's quite a deal -- we wish all tattoo artists doubled as doctors, and vice-versa. Maybe then we could get that Pepe the Fiesta Mart parrot design we've always wanted taken care of on our health-care plan.

After a week-long investigation, Thompson was arrested and charged with practicing medicine without a license, tattooing a prohibited person -- you have to be 18 unless you have parental consent -- and tattooing at an unlicensed facility. (Even in deepest East Texas, unsupervised teenaged house parties don't qualify.) He was also charged for the single hit of ecstasy police found in his possession, and had a few warrants on file at the Lufkin Police HQ to boot.

If convicted of the third-degree charge unauthorized practice of medicine, Thompson could face two to ten years in prison and $10,000 fine.

Let's hope it doesn't come to all that. Meanwhile, the commenters here offer up testaments to Thompson's mad ink skillz and offer up other juicy scenarios about what they think really happened.