Former Tesoro Student Pleads Guilty to Stealing Tests, Changing Grades

A former Tesoro High School senior was convicted Monday of breaking into his high school on multiple occasions to steal advanced placement (AP) tests from classrooms, alter test scores and change official college transcript grades.

Omar Shahid Khan, 21, of Coto de Caza, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of commercial burglary and one felony count each of altering public records, stealing or removing public records, and attempting to steal or remove public records. He is expected to be sentenced Aug. 26 to 30 days in jail, three years of probation, 500 hours of community service and more than $14,900 in restitution. The sentencing will be at 9 a.m. in Department C-41, Central Justice Center, Santa Ana.

He would have faced far more serious penalties had he gone to trial Monday as scheduled. He faced 69 counts of various felonies and could have faced up to 38 years in prison.

Co-defendant Tanvir Singh, 21, of Ladera Ranch, pleaded guilty Sept. 9, 2008, to one felony count of attempting to steal or remove public records and one misdemeanor count of computer access and fraud. He was sentenced on that date to 200 hours of community service and three years of formal probation.

According to the Orange County district attorney's office:

• Between Jan. 23 and May 19, 2008, Khan entered classrooms and administrative offices at Tesoro High School on several occasions late at night and on weekends to steal AP course tests and access school computers to change his grades. Between Jan. 23, 2008, and Jan. 26, 2008, Khan obtained the user name and password of his AP physics instructor and accessed the classroom computer to change his test scores and grades.
• On April 17, 2008, he entered the school administrative offices late at night and changed his office transcripts using the registrar’s user name and password, which he previously obtained by installing spyware devices on multiple computers in Tesoro’s administration offices.
• On April 18, Khan was caught cheating on an AP statistics test. The teacher confiscated the test and gave it to the assistant principal for further disciplinary action. Over the weekend, Khan broke into the assistant principal’s office and stole the test in an attempt to destroy evidence that he had cheated.
• Late at night on April 21, 2008, Kahn entered the administration offices to change his transcript grades and the grades of several other students in the district’s grade database program. The following morning, he requested certified copies of his official transcripts in order to appeal his denial of admission to several colleges including USC, UCLA and UC Berkeley.
• On May 19, 2008, Khan and Singh entered a classroom to steal an English test scheduled for the following day but were interrupted by a night custodian and fled the scene. Cell phone records established that Kahn and Singh exchanged several text messages earlier that day detailing their plans to break into the English teacher’s classroom later in the evening to steal the test answers.

A subsequent search by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department revealed that Khan had installed spyware devices on the computers of several teachers and school administrators throughout his senior year, according to the D.A. The devices were used to obtain passwords to access teacher computers in classrooms and school administrative offices.

Deputy District Attorney Chuck Lawhorn of the White Collar Crime Team is prosecuting this case.