{"id":47901,"date":"2021-03-16T20:42:21","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T00:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=47901"},"modified":"2021-03-16T20:42:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T00:42:28","slug":"high-school-homecoming-court-vote-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2021\/03\/high-school-homecoming-court-vote-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"High School homecoming court vote fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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An assistant principal at an elementary school is accused of accessing the school district\u2019s internal system to cast fraudulent votes for her daughter who was elected homecoming queen at her high school, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, agents arrested Laura Rose Carroll, 50, and her 17-year-old daughter on multiple charges stemming from the October homecoming vote at Tate High School in Pensacola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The investigation began in November when the Escambia County School District reported unauthorized access into hundreds of student accounts, according to a news release from the agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investigators found that in October, hundreds of votes for the school\u2019s homecoming court were flagged as fraudulent, the news release said. There were 117 votes from the same IP address within a short period of time, the investigation found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when investigators found evidence of unauthorized access to the system linked to Carroll\u2019s cellphone and computers at her home. There were 246 votes cast for homecoming court from those devices. Carroll is an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School in Pensacola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiple Tate students told investigators the daughter described using her mother\u2019s system access, or of watching her mother access records, for years, the report said. Investigators learned that since August 2019, Carroll\u2019s account accessed 372 high school records and 339 of those were Tate students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investigators said Carroll had district-level access of the school board\u2019s program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

System users are required to change their password every 45 days, and Carroll\u2019s annual training for the \u201cStaff Responsible Use of Guidelines for Technology\u201d was up to date, the agency said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carroll was booked into the Escambia County Jail and bond was set at $8,500, the agency said. She was released on Monday. It was not immediately known whether Carroll and her daughter are represented by a lawyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her daughter was taken into custody and transferred to the Escambia Regional Juvenile Detention Center. The case has been turned over to the state attorney\u2019s office in Escambia County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Escambia County School District Superintendent Tim Smith told the News Journal that Carroll has been suspended from her job. He declined further comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her daughter has been expelled from Tate High School, agents said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each is charged with offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks and electronic devices; unlawful use of a two-way communications device; criminal use of personally identifiable information and conspiracy to commit those offenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An assistant principal at an elementary school is accused of accessing the school district\u2019s internal system to cast fraudulent votes for her daughter who was elected homecoming queen at her… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":47902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}