Overachiever Gets Jail for Stealing Tests, Hacking Faculty's Computers

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- A former high school student seeking admission to top-tier colleges will spend 30 days in jail for a series of school break-ins to steal tests, alter his grades and place spyware on administrators' computers to learn passwords.

Omar Shahid Khan, 21, was charged with 69 felonies and faced a maximum of 38 years in prison, but on Monday a superior court judge allowed Khan to plead guilty to five counts. In addition to jail time, he will perform 500 hours of community service and pay $14,900 in restitution to Tesoro High School, located in a wealthy unincorporated area of south Orange County, Calif.

"There is a lot of pressure on these kids that if they didn't get good grades, they wouldn't get into college and they cheated. They literally cheated," Khan's attorney, Carol Lavacot, told AOL News. "Cheating was the rule at Tesoro High."

Lavacot said Khan is the only son of Pakistani immigrants who moved here before he was born and sought the American dream for their children. Khan was an overachiever who got perfect grades and dreamed of a career in business and finance like his father, Lavacot said.

But he saw his future slipping away in 2007 as a high school junior when he received an "F" on a Spanish exam. He had taken the day off for a prayer meeting and wasn't allowed to make up the test.

Khan was angry and his grades started slipping -- suddenly his goal of getting into the school of his dreams didn't seem a reality, Lavacot said.

So when he became a senior, along with a group of 10 friends, Khan devised a strategy to improve his grades. He would break into school after hours and steal tests and change scores on college prep courses with a master key that another student had copied, Lavacot said.

Starting in January 2008, Khan changed his scores and grades on the computer belonging to his physics teacher, then he broke into the administrative offices to change his transcripts on the registrar's computer.

Khan knew computer passwords because he had installed keystroke spyware that would provide the information.

Then Khan was caught cheating on a college prep test in class, and his test was confiscated and given to the assistant principal for disciplinary action. Over the weekend, Khan broke into the assistant principal's office and stole the test to destroy evidence that he had cheated, according to prosecutors.

Three days later, he entered the administration offices at night to change his transcript grades and the grades of 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 the University of Southern California and the Universities of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles," according to a statement by the Orange County District Attorney's Office.

He was caught a month later when a night janitor saw him in his English class, where he was trying to steal a test for the following day, according to prosecutors.

A search warrant turned up evidence that Khan and a friend had been texting each other with plans to break into the English classroom. The friend, Tanvir Singh, 21, pleaded guilty in 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 to community service. Khan pleaded guilty to counts of burglary, altering public records and stealing public records.

A spokesman for the school told AOL News that no additional cases of cheating have occurred.

"This is a rare occurrence at worst," said Marcus Walton, communications officer for the Capistrano Unified School District. "We take the education of our students very seriously and hope that within the context of teaching our students, we're able to impart lessons on honesty and character as well."

As for Khan, he is contrite and just wants to put all this behind him, Lavacot said. He graduated at the top of his class at a community college and has switched careers -- he hopes to become a psychiatrist or pediatrician and is now attending a California state university.

Having a felony on his record would make it tough to get a medical license, so Khan hopes the judge will see how hard he is working and downgrade his felony case to a misdemeanor upon sentencing Aug. 26.

"He wants to work with kids," Lavacot said. "He started his junior year in September and has been tutoring students who don't have parents so they can stay in school."