By Douane D. James
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted December 13 2006
Cooper City High School's senior class president was arrested
Tuesday and charged in a grade-tampering scandal that has rocked
the campus.
Ryan C. Shrouder, 18, of Cooper City, was taken to jail from school
and charged with two counts of computer crime with intent to defraud,
a second-degree felony, according to a Broward Sheriff's Office
report. He was released from jail on bail, has been suspended from
school and will be recommended for expulsion, said Joe Melita,
head of the Broward County School District's investigative unit.
Shrouder serves as the alternate student advisor to the Broward
School Board. He often sits in on board meetings and was issued
a school district laptop computer. Sheriff's Office investigators
say Shrouder took advantage of that access and used an employee
password to access the district's network and change the grades
of 19 students. It's unclear whether authorities think he changed
his own grades.
Shrouder was considered the main suspect, but other students could
be punished for being involved, Melita said.
Shrouder's attorney said his client will plead not guilty and
that he is being unfairly singled out.
"To charge a kid with a computer crime is absurd," said
Fort Lauderdale attorney Fred Haddad. "There's plenty of
ways to handle this besides charging a felony."
Shrouder had
been elected leader of his sophomore, junior and senior classes
at Cooper City
High and recently was voted "most
likely to be president" of the United States.
Rumors of the arrest spread quickly at the school Tuesday. Administrators
delayed the second-period bell so students would remain in class
while deputies took Shrouder from the school.
Kara Olesky,
student government president at Cooper City High, said Shrouder
was well liked and
appeared to be "headed
in a positive direction."
"We were shocked," she said. "We
would never have thought anyone would attempt something like that."
The report filed by the Sheriff's Office detailed the alleged
grade-tampering as follows:
On Nov. 2, an assistant principal told authorities that the school
had begun investigating unauthorized grade changes. Course grades
from previous years for 19 students, mostly seniors, had been altered.
Cooper City High's
bookkeeper told investigators that in the week before the grades
were changed
she witnessed Shrouder in the
office of the computer technology specialist looking for a "sign-on" password
to the district network. The technology specialist had left his
passwords on a notepad in his desk, according to the report.
Investigators later determined that the employee's sign-on account
was the same one used to access the grades program and modify the
marks.
A Cooper City High student witness told authorities that on Oct.
30 he saw Shrouder use his laptop to access the computer application
that manages pupil grades. Another student said Shrouder approached
her at a party the next day and said he altered her grades, along
with those of other students.
Sheriff's Office investigators reviewed video surveillance and
forensic computer examinations to back up the witnesses' statements,
according to the report.
Advisors to the School Board are given laptops that have access
to the district network for e-mail purposes, but they don't have
the security clearance to log into the application that manages
grades, officials said.
Last year, a West Boca Raton High student used employee passwords
to hack into the Palm Beach County district network and change
transcripts for students at four high schools. He was ordered to
pay restitution and complete a yearlong program to avoid being
prosecuted for felony computer fraud.
Staff Writer Jean-Paul Renaud contributed to this report.
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This article
was first published at: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-sgrades13dec13,0,5928437.story?coll=sfla-news-broward
and has since been removed. It is being reprinted with permission
for use with this assignment.
