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NY Times, March 12, 2019
College Admissions Scandal: Actresses, Business Leaders and Other
Wealthy Parents Charged
By Jennifer Medina and Katie Benner
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.
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.
In many of the cases, prosecutors said, the students were often not
aware that their parents were doctoring their test scores and lying to
get them into school.
“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.
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.
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 Christopher 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 prosecutors did
not charge any students or universities with wrongdoing.
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.
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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.
Mr. Singer also helped parents go to great lengths to falsely present
their children as the sort of top-flight athletes that coaches would
want to recruit.
Mr. Singer fabricated athletic “profiles” of students to submit with
their applications, which contained teams the students had not played on
and fake honors they had not won. Some parents supplied “staged
photographs of their children engaged in athletic activity,” according
to the authorities; and Mr. Singer’s associates also photoshopped the
faces of the applicants onto images of athletes found on the internet.
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.
The student, who did not play soccer, was described as the co-captain of
a prominent club soccer team in Southern California in order to be
recruited for the Yale women’s soccer team. The coach of the Yale soccer
team was bribed at least $400,000 to recruit the student.
“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 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.
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 transcript of a
recorded phone conversation between the two men captured in a
court-authorized wiretap.
During the phone call, Mr. Singer told Mr. Caplan that nearly 800 other
families had used what he called “side doors” to get their children into
college. “What we do is we help the wealthiest families in the U.S. get
their kids into school,” Mr. Singer said. “They want guarantees, they
want this thing done.”
“There is a front door which means you get in on your own,” Mr. Singer
told Mr. Caplan. “The back door is through institutional advancement,
which is 10 times as much money. And I’ve created this side door in.”
Mr. Singer told Mr. Caplan that his daughter wouldn’t know that her
standardized test scores had been faked.
“Nobody knows what happens,” Mr. Singer said, according to the
transcript of the call. “She feels great about herself. She got a test a
score, and now you’re actually capable for help getting into a school.
Because the test score’s no longer an issue. Does that make sense?”
Dozens of people were charged in what the authorities said was a scheme
to get students admitted to top schools, including the University of
Southern California.CreditRozette Rago for The New York Times
“That does,” Mr. Caplan said.
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.
In an interview, Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on
Education, a college and university trade group, said, “If these
allegations are true, they violate the essential premise of a fair and
transparent college admissions process.”
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