Arraignment today for tutor in cheating scandal

The private tutor who is believed to be at the center of an elaborate, years-long cheating scheme at Corona del Mar High School is set to be arraigned Wednesday in Santa Ana.

After eluding authorities for 10 months, Newport Beach detectives arrested Timothy Lance Lai, 29, on Monday at Los Angeles International Airport upon his return to the United States.

Police did not disclose how they knew he was going to be at LAX or where he was arriving from.

Police handcuffed the tutor, who was dressed in jeans and an orange-and-white striped T-shirt, in an airport parking lot.

Lai was charged Monday with one felony count of second-degree commercial burglary and four felony counts of computer access and fraud. He is being held on $200,000 bail, according to court records.

Though prosecutors believe that Lai changed the grades of three students, 11 were expelled from the school in January in the aftermath of the scandal.

Jane Garland, who resigned from her post as the district’s director of student services during the scandal, said the district mishandled the investigation and ignored her recommendations to give the students a lighter punishment or heed warnings that the problem might be more widespread.

“There are people at CdM, both parents and students, that I’m sure are really scared today,” she said Tuesday. “They don’t want their kid’s name brought into this when they’ve so far been able to avoid being identified.”

School administrators first became suspicious of cheating activity in June 2013 after a teacher discovered that the grades of some students had been changed.

District officials and police launched an investigation and discovered keylogging devices plugged into the computers of two teachers, but while authorities believed a tutor was at the center of the cheating, they were unable to identify the person.

Just as the case began to grow cold after months of inactivity, another keylogging device was discovered on a third teacher’s computer.

In December, an assistant principal contacted the school resource officer about an 11th-grade student.

The male student said that during the middle of his sophomore year, Lai asked him to place a keylogging device on the computers of several CdM teachers, according to a 16-page search warrant and affidavit obtained in Orange County Superior Court.

The student initially declined to help, but as the year progressed, he was called upon again to place keyloggers on three computers, those of science, Spanish and English teachers, court papers say.

He finally agreed to place the device on a teacher’s computer. Upon returning the device to Lai, he was given a copy of an upcoming history test, the affidavit asserts.

During an interview with police, the student identified 11 other teens who were apparently involved in the cheating.

Officers searched Lai’s vehicle and home in Irvine at the time but were unable to locate him.

Authorities seized four USB thumb drives, several electronic devices, a cellphone, a notepad bearing students’ names, a notebook containing multiple tests with a female student’s name written on it, schoolwork and routers, according to the property report attached to the search warrant.

Detectives believe Lai fled the country after the scheme was made public.

“We have not had any contact with him before today,” Newport Beach police spokeswoman Jennifer Manzella said Monday.

Families described Lai as someone who profited from the school’s academically rigorous culture and well-financed student clientele. Some families paid Lai upward of $45 per hour to tutor their teens.

Lai had become known for his ability to help students boost their GPAs, parents said.

Out of 365 students who graduated from CdM last year, 99% of them attended college in the fall, with the majority of them enrolling at four-year universities, according to information published by the district.

Lai was also an expert at befriending those he tutored, acting as “one of the guys” and often attending birthday parties and other social gatherings, parents said.

While some parents admit to feeling uneasy about the tutor, they said they didn’t have any reason to believe the situation would become so sinister.

If convicted, Lai faces a maximum of five years and eight months in jail, according to a news release from the Orange County district attorney’s office.

“NMUSD is grateful for the ongoing support and diligence from the Newport Beach Police Department,” district spokeswoman Laura Boss wrote in a prepared statement.