Thinking of rigging a high school homecoming court competition? It’s going to cost you—possibly up to 16 years in federal prison.

At least, that’s one what one mother-daughter duo is facing after committing this exact crime. The two, 50-year-old Laura Rose Carroll, an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School in Pensacola, Florida, and her 18-year-old daughter, Emily Rose Grover, were arrested in March after being caught red-handed for the incident.

The two were caught after the Escambia County School District were able to uncover several instances of unauthorized access into hundreds of student accounts in an attempt to create false votes for Tate High School’s Homecoming Court.

Carroll and Grover were able to get in a false 117 votes, but the problem is that they all originated from the same IP address within a short period of time. So, the votes were flagged as fraudulent, and the mother and daughter were later arrested.

So how did they even manage to gain access if it was unauthorized? As the assistant principal, it turns out that Carroll had access of the school board’s student information system, called FOCUS, and Grover had accessed the student accounts to create the votes.

The investigation found that Carroll’s cell phone and computers contained unauthorized access to FOCUS with the amount of unauthorized votes actually totaling 246. The investigation also found that Carroll’s FOCUS account accessed 372 high school records (339 of those being Tate High School students) beginning in August 2019.

The two were arrested and put in Escambia County Jail. They were charged with a long list of crimes, including one count of offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, and electronic devices, a third-degree felony; unlawful use of a two-way communications device, a third-degree felony; criminal use of personally identifiable information, a third-degree felony; and conspiracy to commit these offenses, a first degree misdemeanor.

Carroll has a bond set at $8,500 and Grover was transferred to the Escambia Regional Juvenile Detention Center. The arrest took place one month before Grover turned 18, so she will be tried as an adult. The Office of the State Attorney, First Judicial Circuit will prosecute this case.

You can view the whole press release here, or to hear more on this case, check out the video below!

What do you think of this crime? Do you know anyone in your own life who has ever gained unauthorized access into accounts like this before?