Student Held in Grade Fixing Scheme

A Newport Beach high school student was taken into custody Monday and accused of a felony for allegedly hacking into a school computer system and altering grades, police said.

Detectives led the 17-year-old, whom police would not identify because of his age, from Corona del Mar High School on Monday morning.

He was released to his parents after several hours of questioning, according to Sgt. Steve Shulman.

Police also searched the student’s home, removing computers and paperwork, Shulman said.

The move comes more than a week after school officials notified police of suspicious changes to grades of six juniors and one senior.

Shulman said detectives were continuing to investigate the role of other students.

“There very well may be other students involved,” he said.

The student was accused Monday with “unauthorized alteration of computerized data,” a felony punishable by up to three years in prison.

Juvenile court officials and prosecutors will wait until police finish their investigation before deciding whether to pursue charges. If there are charges, authorities will also decide whether those involved will be tried as adults.

Jane Garland, a spokeswoman for Newport-Mesa Unified School District, said school officials grew suspicious after noticing several electronic “flags” that indicate a grade change in the students’ electronic records.

Apart from the police investigation, Garland said, the school is reviewing the records of all 1,500 Corona del Mar students in grades seven through 12 to see if other grades were altered.

She said the 17-year-old has been suspended for at least five days.

It appears, Garland said, that the student records were accessed from a remote location, which was supposedly not possible, and without a valid password, an indication that the hacker circumvented the system’s security measures.

“We’re upset that we were compromised and we’re saddened that these students, who are obviously pretty smart, would use their intelligence for this,” she said.

“We’re in a new age. We know that kids will find out what they can do, but we need to be clear that this is illegal -- that it’s not a game.”