This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A Philadelphia man has pleaded guilty to trying to hack the IRS to obtain Donald Trump’s tax returns in a case that the defense legal team called a “Wayne’s World scene gone awry”.

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Andrew Harris pleaded guilty on Thursday to two computer fraud counts in federal court. The 23-year-old faces up to two years in prison and $200,000 fine.

Harris and 22-year-old Justin Hiemstra were both students at Haverford College outside Philadelphia in 2016 when they used a school computer lab to open a fraudulent federal financial aid application for an unnamed Trump family member.

The students managed to reset a password and, using Trump’s social security number and date of birth, repeatedly tried to import Trump’s federal tax information into the application, according to court documents.

The Department of Education and IRS detected the attempts. Trump has long refused to release his tax information, saying the documents are under audit.

Harris’s attorney, William J Brennan Jr called the plan a college prank that went wrong.

“This was a Wayne’s World scene gone awry,” said Brennan, referring to the 1990s comedic film about two teenagers with a TV show.

Hiemstra pleaded guilty on 6 August. Both men are set to be sentenced in December.