3 Students Arrested in Moorpark High Computer Break-In

Three Moorpark High students have been arrested on suspicion that they broke into their school’s computer system, destroyed fellow students’ schoolwork and sent death threats to their computer teacher.

The arrests of the boys, all juniors, caps a two-month investigation by the Sheriff’s Department and the FBI, authorities said.

A computer instructor at the school began receiving hate mail about two months ago that included graphic comments about his sexuality, racial slurs and death threats, police said.

The teacher alerted the school, which called authorities.

According to officials, the students used fairly sophisticated methods to break into the Moorpark High School computer and then tried to hide the trail of their electronic handiwork by setting up a series of Internet accounts using fake names and stolen credit card numbers.

The students allegedly began their work using “a sniffer”--a device that when installed in a computer can record what keys a user strikes while using it. Authorities believe that enabled the students to record the user name and password of a school administrator to access the school’s system.

“It’s like having the keys to the teacher’s desk drawers,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Terry Hughes of the Moorpark station.

The suspects were not identified because of their age.

The students told investigators their intention was simply to change the school’s Internet page, Hughes said. The page depicted some students washing a car as an advertisement for a fund-raiser.

“The students just wanted other students to know someone had been there,” Hughes said. “Basically they were doing it for bragging rights, like a prank. . . . You had four or five kids that got together and their collective judgment was a lot worse than their individual judgment.”

Once inside the system, the computer vandals were able to access work completed by other students, including tests and term papers, Hughes said. Some of that work was intentionally destroyed, Hughes said.

The suspects also allegedly set up e-mail accounts using fake names, paid for with credit card numbers stolen from the Internet, Hughes said.

The suspects are also accused of sending hateful and threatening messages to their instructor, whose name was not released. Authorities believe the threats were in retaliation for earlier discipline given to one or more of the students.

“Someone gets upset with the teacher, and then I think he became their vehicle to do something malicious on the computer,” Hughes said. “I don’t think their real goal in life was to harm the teacher. They were just being malicious teenagers that, as a group, exercised very poor judgment.”

Investigators were able to trace the e-mail to an America Online account in Canada, paid for with a credit card number stolen from a New York resident. Other purchases made with that credit card number, including graphic material from adult sites on the Internet, led investigators to a student in Moorpark, Hughes said.

A search warrant served on that student’s home on Wednesday morning resulted in investigators seizing the boy’s computer. Hughes said the teen was arrested on suspicion of sending threatening hate mail through the Internet, illegally accessing the high school’s instructional computer system and unauthorized possession of credit card numbers.

In interviews with authorities, the student indicated four other teens were involved. Hughes said investigators arrested two other students and seized three additional computers. Investigators are combing through the files stored on each of the seized computers for additional evidence, Hughes said.

All of the students were issued citations and released to their parents while officers continue their investigation, Hughes said.

Hughes said such abuses by students are not that unusual.

“I get these kinds of cases occasionally,” Hughes said. “They come up every year or so; it just happens. People don’t recognize it, but the Internet is like a car. Once your kid is in it, if they’re not supervised, they can do a lot of damage.”