Reported by: Ryan Mills, Naples Daily NewsNAPLES, FL -- With a padlock, a doorbell and a security camera that let him see who was coming down the hallway, investigators say 16-year-old Jason Warner Cooper was secure behind his bedroom door. Maybe too secure.
It’s what he was doing in the privacy of his bedroom that authorities say led to his arrest on 22 felonies recently.
Cooper, 4158 Lorraine Ave., East Naples, is charged with hacking into the Collier County School District’s private network where he was able to access teachers’ usernames and passwords, change his grades on exams and homework assignments, and change the grades of other students.
When investigators from the Collier County Sheriff’s Office searched Cooper’s computer, they found 20 sexually explicit images and videos of young boys.
"I wasn’t very surprised, to be honest with you," Detective Thomas Muscato said. "When we served the search warrant at his house, some of the things we found, I can’t go into, didn’t surprise me what we found on his computer."
Cooper was arrested June 11 and charged with two felony counts of crimes against computer users, and 20 felony counts of possession of child pornography.
Muscato said that Cooper, who has been charged as a juvenile, has been released on home detention. Attempts to reach him for comment Thursday evening were unsuccessful.
Cooper was a sophomore at Naples High School during the 2007-08 school year, according to a school yearbook. He is not listed in the 2008-09 yearbook. Muscato said Cooper’s father pulled him out of the school after the computer hacking allegations came to light last December.
Investigators believe Cooper started hacking into the school district computers around October 2008, possibly by guessing the password of an employee. He was then able to access the usernames and passwords of teachers, reports said.
Cooper also set up a rule in the e-mail of a district IT employee to forward all incoming and outgoing e-mails to his cell phone, according to investigators.
School officials learned of Cooper’s hacking in December by tracking his Internet protocol, or IP, address.
"They had been working on it for a couple of weeks before they called us," Muscato said.
Besides his own, Cooper changed the grades of five or six other students, Muscato said. A couple may have known about it, he said.
"None of them said they were paying him anything," Muscato said.
Collier County School District spokesman Joe Landon said the district found the breach and has put safeguards in place to ensure the breach will not happen again.
Sheriff’s Office investigators served a search warrant at Cooper’s home on Jan. 2, seizing three laptops, three external hard drives, two computer towers, two flash drives, a cell phone and numerous CD-ROMs and floppy discs, reports said. His bedroom was well-secured with a padlock on the door, a doorbell and a security camera, Muscato said.
The child porn was found in a folder named "Jason’s file," Muscato said.
Muscato said he doesn’t suggest that parents allow their children to be padlocked in their room, much less have a doorbell and security camera.
"I have a 16-year-old at home, and I don’t even allow him to lock the door in my house,” Muscato said. “I don’t recommend it."
