When CNN reached him, a man who identified himself as Carroll’s husband said, “We have no comment at this point. Our attorneys have told us not to speak and we will have our day in court.”
The FDLE said it was contacted by the Escambia County School District in November 2020 over allegations of unauthorized access to hundreds of student accounts.
According to the release, investigators found Carroll, an assistant director at Bellview Elementary, and her daughter, a student at Tate High, were using Carroll’s district-level access to enter bills where hundreds of fraudulent votes were cast in Taft’s homecoming court. The votes were identified as fraudulent when 117 votes allegedly came from the same IP address within a short period of time. Authorities reported that FDLE agents found evidence of unauthorized access in connection with both Carroll’s cell phone and the home computers.
Investigators said they found nearly 250 fraudulently cast votes in homecoming court.
“Several students reported that Carroll’s daughter described using her mother’s account to cast votes,” the statement said.
The investigation also found that Carroll’s account had access to 372 high school records in early August 2019, 339 of which belonged to Tate students, according to the FDLE release.
Carroll and her daughter were each charged with crimes against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks and electronic devices; unauthorized use of a two-way communication device; criminal use of personally identifiable information; and conspiracy to commit these crimes, the release said. Everything except the conspiracy charge are listed as third-degree crimes.
CNN’s Amanda Jackson contributed to this report.