Jennifer Medina and Katie Benner, The New York Times, March 12, 2019; original article contains a video; see also (1) (2)
image (not from article) from
Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people on Tuesday in a major college admission scandal that involved wealthy parents, including Hollywood celebrities and prominent business leaders, paying bribes to get their children into elite American universities.
Thirty-three parents were charged in the case and prosecutors said there could be additional indictments to come. Also implicated were top college coaches, who were accused of accepting millions of dollars to help admit students to Wake Forest, Yale, Stanford, the University of Southern California and other schools, regardless of their academic or sports ability, officials said.
The parents included the television star Lori Loughlin and her husband, the fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli; the actress Felicity Huffman; and William E. McGlashan Jr., a partner at the private equity firm TPG, officials said.
[Read the full list of who has been charged here.]
The case unveiled Tuesday was stunning in its breadth and audacity. It was the Justice Department’s largest ever college admissions prosecution, a sprawling investigation that involved 200 agents nationwide and resulted in charges against 50 people in six states.
The charges also underscored how college admissions have become so cutthroat and competitive that some have sought to break the rules. The authorities say the parents of some of the nation’s wealthiest and most privileged students sought to buy spots for their children at top universities, not only cheating the system, but potentially cheating other hard-working students out of a chance at a college education.
“The parents are the prime movers of this fraud,” Andrew E. Lelling, the United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said Tuesday during a news conference. Mr. Lelling said that those parents used their wealth to create a separate and unfair admissions process for their children.
But, Mr. Lelling said, “there will not be a separate criminal justice system” for them.
“The real victims in this case are the hardworking students,” who were displaced in the admissions process by “far less qualified students and their families who simply bought their way in,” Mr. Lelling said.
“This is an extreme, unsubtle and illegal example of the increasingly common practice of using money to get an edge in the race for a place in an elite university,” said Chris Hunt, who runs College Essay Mentor, a consulting service for applicants. “The more common practice is to spend money in indirect ways: High-priced test prep. Coaches so your kid can be a recruited athlete. Donations as an alum. Donations as a non-alum.”
At the center of the sweeping financial crime and fraud case was William Singer, the founder of a college preparatory business called the Edge College & Career Network, also known as The Key.
Federal authorities say dozens of individuals were involved in a nationwide bribery and fraud scheme to help students gain admission to elite colleges and universities. Racketeering charges against 12 of the defendants are detailed in this indictment, one of a number of charging documents in the case [JB: original article contains image of cover page of, and a link to, the indictment]
The authorities said Mr. Singer, who has agreed to plead guilty to the charges and cooperated with federal prosecutors, used The Key and its nonprofit arm, Key Worldwide Foundation, which is based in Newport Beach, Calif., to help students cheat on their standardized tests, and to pay bribes to the coaches who could get them into college with fake athletic credentials.
Mr. Singer used “The Key” as a front, allowing parents to funnel money into an account that would not have to pay federal taxes.
Parents paid Mr. Singer about $25 million from 2011 until February 2019 to bribe coaches and university administrators to designate their children as recruited athletes, which effectively ensured their admission, according to the indictment.
Mr. Singer is also accused of bribing Division 1 athletic coaches to tell admissions officers that they wanted certain students, even though the students did not have the necessary athletic credentials.
Most elite universities recruit student athletes and use different criteria to admit them, often with lower grades and standardized test scores than other students. Admissions officers typically set aside a number of spots in each freshman class for coaches to recruit students to their teams.
“At each of the universities the admissions prospects of recruited athletes are higher — and in some cases significantly higher — than those of non-recruited athletes with similar grades and standardized test scores,” the indictment said.
In one example detailed in an indictment, the parents of a student applying to Yale paid Mr. Singer $1.2 million to help her get admitted. Mr. Singer then sent information about the student to an associate soccer coach asking for made-up details about her athletic prowess.
“This girl will be a midfielder and attending Yale so she has to be very good,” Mr. Singer wrote in an email detailing instructions, adding that he would need “a soccer pic probably Asian girl.”
After the profile was created, Mr. Singer sent the fake profile to Rudolph Meredith, the head coach of the women’s soccer team at Yale, who then designated her as a recruit, even though he knew the student did not play competitive soccer, according to the complaint.
In its investigation, known internally as Operation Varsity Blues, the government focused on the role that it said the 33 indicted parents played in a scandal that also ensnared two standardized test administrators, a test proctor, and more than a dozen coaches at top schools including Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California.
Those parents were willing to pay between $15,000 and $75,000 per test, which went to college entrance exam administrators who helped their children cheat on them by giving them answers, correcting their work or even letting third parties falsely pose as their children and take the tests in their stead, according to the indictment.
Image from article: William Singer appeared at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston on Tuesday.CreditJessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe, via Getty Images
Mr. Singer instructed at least one parent, Mr. McGlashan, the partner at TPG, to claim that his son had learning disabilities in order to gain extended time for him to take his college entrance exam alone, over two days instead of one, according to court documents.
The government said that Mr. McGlashan’s son was told to take the exam at one of two test centers where Mr. Singer worked with test administrators who had been bribed to allow students to cheat — one in Houston and one in West Hollywood. And Mr. Singer told Mr. McGlashan to fabricate a reason, such as a wedding, for why their children would need to take the test in one of those locations.
Mr. McGlashan’s son was unaware of the scheme, according to court documents.
A spokesman for Mr. McGlashan and for TPG did not respond to an email seeking comment.
When Mr. Singer explained the scheme last June to Gordon R. Caplan, co-chairman of the global law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Mr. Caplan laughed and said, “And it works?” according to a recording of a phone conversation between the two men captured in a court-authorized wiretap.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Caplan and Willkie Farr did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Mr. Lelling, the United States attorney, said that the first lead in the case came when the target of an entirely separate investigation gave prosecutors a tip that the bribery and cheating might be occurring.
Universities were quick to respond on Tuesday. According to the indictment, Stanford University’s head sailing coach, John Vandemoer, took financial contributions to the sailing program from an intermediary in exchange for agreeing to recommend two prospective students for admission.
Stanford said Tuesday that Mr. Vandemoer had been fired.
“Neither student came to Stanford,” the statement said. “However, the alleged behavior runs completely counter to Stanford’s values.”
In a tweet, USC Trojans, the official Twitter account of the University of Southern California athletic department, said that the university was cooperating with the government’s investigation.
It said the university was identifying any funds received in connection with the scheme, an apparent reference to bribery. And it said the university would “take employment actions as appropriate” and was reviewing its admissions process to make sure that nothing like this could happen in the future.
In a letter to the university community, Wanda M. Austin, the interim president of the University of Southern California, said, “It is immensely disappointing that individuals would abuse their position at the university this way.”
Dr. Austin said she did not believe that admissions officers were aware of the scheme or took part in it, and she described the university as a victim. “The federal government has alleged that U.S.C. is a victim in a scheme perpetrated against the university by a longtime Athletics Department employee, one current coach and three former coaching staff,” she said.
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