A Miami high school student who hacked into his school’s website to change grades is facing “years” in custody, after Jose Bautista, 18, handed a written confession to police, according to ABC News’s report.
Bautista is facing eight felony charges, and is being held under house arrest with a GPS monitor, according to Darknet’s report. Facing Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Thomas J. Rebull, the teenager was told, “You’ve been arrested on four counts of offenses against intellectual property, public records exemption and four counts of offenses against computer users.”
A local TV station quoted Bautista’s classmates as describing his plan to raise grade averages as “pretty crazy”, according to SCI Magazine’s report. He is accused of hacking into a school network via a website, and changing both his own grades and those of four other students at the school, and is being held on $20,000 bond, according to SCI Magazine’s report.
Miami-Dade school district issued a statement saying, “In addition to the arrest and ongoing criminal investigation, the Code of Student Conduct provides for corrective strategies - including recommendation for expulsion."
ABC News interviewed a variety of Bautista’s classmates: :"I think the lengths he went to change grades was pretty crazy," sais Susan Bean, who also attended Bautista’s school, the Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School in Miami
Rumors had circulated that a hacker was altering grades in the week before Bautista’s arrest, according to local TV station WFOR-TV. The station quoted classmate Brett Curtis who said , "There have been whispers going around for the last week or so. More and more information started to come out and then we saw that he was arrested."
Speaking to ABC News, internet privacy lawyer Parry Aftab said that he thought it was likely that Bautista would spend a “number of years” in custody. On WFOR-TV, the teenager fidgeted and looked nervous wearing an inmate’s orange jumpsuit while being interviewed.
