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Four Ex-Students Charged in High School Grade Manipulation Scam

Four ex-students at three suburban Houston high schools (USA) have been charged after they reportedly hacked into their schools' computer systems.

The students are Ravi Thakral and Francis Nwajel from Elkins High, Rishab Verma of Hightower High School and Vincent Paresa of Bush High. The culprits would steal system from the school premises, give it to some other student who downloaded malicious software on it, and give back the system to the school the following day.

Then, he would run the freshly installed programs that hacked into district's network. Software installed on the system traced e-mail addresses, passwords, keystrokes and other details, directing it to the e-mail addresses saved on a remote server.

Further, these four would exploit the details to access the accounts of teachers and manipulate attendance records and grades. Assistant District Attorney of Fort Bend County, Scott Carpenter, stated that the details provided the students free access to the records of school district. A teacher also received a threat e-mail, as per the news published by FortBendNow.com on March 4, 2010.

In 2008, the probe into the case started when changes in grades were started to be noticed by the teachers. Students were interrogated, and their participation in the fraud was accepted by four of them, said prosecutors.

According to reports, these four culprits have been indicted on account of violating computer security, inauthentic use of details, conspiracy, involvement in the activity of organized crime and meddling with govt. documents. The accusations comprise both state jail crimes as well as first degree crimes, and have a punishment range of probation to life in the prison.

All the students do not have lawyers. However, Steven "Rocket" Rosen, representative of Rishab Verma, stated that the client only got engaged with the bad guys, as per the news published by chron on March 5, 2010.

As per Rosen, Rishab is a good child. He also said that these young high school students think that they are unbeatable. And, in that moment of challenges, they end up doing crazy things in lure of winning the challenge.

Earlier, officials have estimated the school district's losses at around $200,000. Officials stated that around 60 students' grades were manipulated.

In addition, no one has been arrested, and prosecutors are working with the families of former students and expected them to turn themselves in a month.

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