Student pleads guilty to installing spyware on school computers

Omar Khan, a 21-year old former student of Tesoro High School in Orange County, California, has plead guilty to charges of having installed spyware on his high school’s computers and having used the collected passwords to access the grade system and change his grades.

He was arrested three years ago along with another student, one Tanvir Singh, that joined Khan in breaking into the school’s assistant principal’s office at night. Khan’s goal was to destroy the evidence that he cheated on a statistics test by stealing it, and Singh’s to steal an English test he took.

Since his conviction back in 2008, Singh already completed the 200 hours of community service he was sentenced to. Khan, who is to be sentenced in August, is expected to get 30 days in jail, 500 hours of community service, and will probably have to pay a fine of $15,000.

According to CSO Online, Khan has admitted he was guilty of breaking into school offices and installing spyware on computers used by teachers and school administrators, then using the passwords to change some of his grades and that of 12 other students.

He also acknowledged that he changed his transcript grades in order to manage to get into the universities he sent application letters to.