I recently stumbled across the story of a couple of students at Ohio’s Miami University who installed a keylogger on a public computer and used it to steal the passwords of faculty members which they used to change their own grades and those of various fraternity brothers.
Business Week a good article on the case.
Miami University Phi Deltas Beckley Munson Parker of Weston, Connecticut and David Lucien Callahan of Cambridge, Massachusetts were apparently studying business and finance (at Miami’s Farmer School of Business) when the pressure of their rigorous academic schedule (or fraternity drinking/hazing activities) got the better of them and they decided that the only way to keep their grades up was to steal faculty passwords and change their grades. Considering that they had access to the fraternity test bank to copy from before finals (which they may have helped to fill with their hacking), they must have been pretty desperate. Or just really lazy.
After being expelled from Miami University, Journal News reports that David Callahan was sentenced to a 180-day suspended jail sentence, a $3,000 fine and ordered to pay restitution of $1,610. Beckley Parker got two years probation and was ordered to pay $6,000 in fines.
Hopefully they have learned their lesson, but at least it seems like they haven’t lost interest in business. After being expelled from Miami University, David Callahan seems to have continued his business and finance studies at University of Massachusetts Boston College of Management. He was even involved in the Umass Boston student managed fund.
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