Aiken County teacher arrested for forgery after submitting altered drug test

Sep. 8—More details have emerged as to what led police to arrest an Aiken County teacher last week.

Thomas Russell Schneider, 49, of Grovetown, Georgia, was taken into custody by Aiken County authorities on Sept. 2 at LBC Middle School in relation to an Aug. 24 incident that took in Richmond County, according to jail records.

Schneider was arrested and charged with first-degree felony forgery, according to an incident report from the Richmond County Sheriff's Office.

Police said the incident took place around Aug. 24 and involved altering the results of a drug test, according to arrest warrants from the Richmond County Warrant's Office.

The warrant states that the suspect emailed drug screening results that were altered to reflect negative results for the substances he was being tested for.

The suspect didn't have any authority to alter the results, the warrant said.

Police began investigating the case after receiving a complaint from an employee at a drug screening laboratory located in Augusta, according to the report.

The complainant said she had been contacted by a woman who wanted to validate the drug test results and the email address from which the results had been sent, the report said.

The complainant determined the email was not associated with the business and the drug screening report that was provided by the caller had been altered, the report said.

The caller then provided the drug testing company a copy of the altered report she had received, the report said.

While reviewing metadata for the document, police determined the items were altered using PDFfiller and iText, the report said.

During a Google search, police found an email belonging to the suspect's band that linked the email account to the suspect, the report said.

Schneider was held at the Aiken County detention before being extradited to Richmond County. He has since made bond.