A 17-year-old high school senior along with her mother, Laura Rose Carroll, were arrested this week, charged with accessing student records in a fraudulent attempt to rig her school’s Homecoming Queen election.
Carroll worked as an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School in the Escambia County School District in Cantonment, Fla. — the same district where her daughter attended Tate High School, the Washington Post reported. Authorities were tipped off to the fake votes after the daughter bragged to other students about using her mom’s access to “FOCUS,” the district student-information system, to cast votes in the election for the school’s Homecoming Court from student accounts, without their knowledge.
Tate High School’s student body of about 2,000 had two days between Oct. 28 and 30 to cast their votes for Homecoming Court through “Election Runner,” a system frequently used by the school for election-type activities. It requires students to provide their school-ID numbers and birth dates before they can vote.
On Oct. 31, Carroll’s daughter was crowned Homecoming Queen, but the victory was short-lived. The Washington Post said that before the vote window was closed, Election Runner sent an alert to the school warning that many of the votes were suspected to be fraudulent.
‘FOCUS’ Student-Data System Breached
Carroll’s daughter didn’t seem too worried about hiding the fraud, since she bragged to fellow students about the stolen votes. Arrest records document about 117 votes from the same IP address, which investigators were able to trace back to Carroll’s home and cellphone, the Post reported.
“She looks up all of our group of friends’ grades and makes comments about how she can find our test scores all the time,” one student said, in a written statement.
“I recall times that she logged onto her mom’s FOCUS account and openly shared information, grades, schedules, etc., with others,” another student’s statement read. “She did not seem like logging in was a big deal, and was very comfortable with doing so.”
Another witness told authorities that Carroll would have received a notification each time her daughter logged onto the FOCUS system, according to the Post. The witness added that Carroll was required to change her password for the FOCUS system every 45 days, meaning she would have had to have shared each of the new passwords with her daughter for her to maintain access.
Carroll met with the Escambia County School board on Nov. 4 about the alleged abuse of the school’s student data. On Nov. 5, the district contacted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement [FDLE] to report she and her daughter “were involved in potential unauthorized access to student FOCUS accounts,” the Post added.
“The investigation also found that beginning August 2019, Carroll’s FOCUS account accessed 372 high school records, and 339 of those were of Tate High School students,” FDLE said in a news release. “The investigation also revealed that beginning August 2019, Carroll’s Focus account accessed 372 high school records, and 339 of those were of Tate High School students.”
Both Carroll and her daughter were arrested on one count each of offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks and electronic devices (a third-degree felony); unlawful use of a two-way communications device (also a third-degree felony); criminal use of personally identifiable information (yet another third-degree felony); and conspiracy to commit these offenses (a first-degree misdemeanor), according to the FDLE.
School-District Insider Threats
With schools under constant threat of cyberattack, targeted by malware, phishing, distributed denial of service (DDoS), Zoom-bombings and more, abuse from trusted users and insider threats is also something that needs to be checked. A joint alert issued from CISA and the FBI last December called schools a “data-rich environment of student information.”
And in case there was any question about how seriously law enforcement tends to take this type of breach of student data, just look at the consequences Carroll and her daughter are facing.
Carroll was arrested and booked into the county jail and released after posting $6,000 bond, according to the Post, while her daughter was taken to the juvenile detention center. Carroll was also suspended from her job, the Post said.
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