Ryan ChartrandContra Costa County prosecutors charged Cal Poly business student Julian Revilleza and 33 current and former Diablo Valley College students with felony fraud and conspiracy in a cash-for-grades scheme, the Contra Costa Times reported Wednesday.
Investigators said Revilleza, who came to Cal Poly in summer 2006, was one of the leaders in the scheme and was charged with 23 felonies. He could be sentenced to nearly 70 years in prison if convicted.
Students at DVC allegedly paid Revilleza hundreds of dollars to change their grades in order to transfer to universities such as UC Berkeley, UC Davis and San Francisco State. Investigators found grade changes dating back to 2000.
Neither the San Luis Obispo County Jail nor the Martinez Detention Facility in Contra Costa County reported Revilleza being in custody Wednesday afternoon.
Investigators found that the students made the grade changes by secretly using authorized computers.
DVC administrators said they sent corrected transcripts to each university that had accepted the charged students.
It is unknown whether Revilleza changed his own grades to get into Cal Poly, as the university has not received the revised transcripts from DVC, said Cal Poly Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Bill Durgin.
“Within the next day or two we will be looking to see which grades are an issue and which we need to be concerned about,” Durgin said.
Cal Poly’s course of action is also unknown since there are criminal charges involved, which the court proceedings will resolve.
“With regard to the falsification of academic records, as we would with any student for whom we found there had been erroneous data submitted that resulted in admission or non-admission, we would re-visit the admission decision based on the new information,” Durgin said. “One possible outcome would be that he would be dismissed because he would not have been admitted in the first place.”