College Entrance Scam includes former Yale Women's Soccer Coach

Anyone watch the FBI press conference or read this? Claim is former Yale Women's Head Coach was one of the participants, and took a $400k bribe to get a non-soccer player in as a soccer recruit. Unreal. Recruiting tip #1 -- no bribes or cheating.
 
Anyone watch the FBI press conference or read this? Claim is former Yale Women's Head Coach was one of the participants, and took a $400k bribe to get a non-soccer player in as a soccer recruit. Unreal. Recruiting tip #1 -- no bribes or cheating.

“There will not be a separate admissions system for the wealthy" -- right. Note that that statement came from the US Attorney, not the Yale President.
 
UCLA's current men's soccer coach and USC former soccer coach and former asst coach, plus an asst AD, all indicted (along with some non-soccer coaches). This is the tip of the iceberg. In some cases it was athletic coaches using priority athlete admit tags to get kids into college who aren't athletes and in some cases it was actual athletes getting doctored test scores to help them get in so they could play on the teams.
 
“There will not be a separate admissions system for the wealthy" -- right. Note that that statement came from the US Attorney, not the Yale President.

The US Attorney also said "this is not about paying for buildings with your name on it." In other words, the extremely wealthy have always had legal, tax-deductible ways to achieve this result. This is about the very rich (but not very smart) trying to level the playing field with the extremely wealthy.
 
The US Attorney also said "this is not about paying for buildings with your name on it." In other words, the extremely wealthy have always had legal, tax-deductible ways to achieve this result. This is about the very rich (but not very smart) trying to level the playing field with the extremely wealthy.

Interesting touch with the word "legal".
 
In the complaint I read that many of the kids did not know their parents were cheating for them...really sad...

From the complaint:

"Court-authorized wiretap:
6
CAPLAN And it works? CW-1 Every time. (laughing) CAPLAN (laughing) CW-1
I mean, I’m sure I did 30 of them at different, you know, dates because there’s
different dates,
and they’re all families like yours, and they’re all kids that wouldn’t have perform[ed] a
s well, and then they did really well, and it was like,
the kids thought, and it was so funny ’cause the kids will call me and say, “Maybe
I
should do that again. I did pretty well and if I took it again, I’ll do better even.”
Right? And they just have no
idea that they didn’t even get the score that they
thought they got."

Indeed, in many cases, CW-
1’s clients referred other parents to him, or inquired directly about other parents’
involvement in the scheme. For example, as set forth in greater detail below, defendant ...HUNEEUS, Jr., told CW-1, in substance, that he was aware that McGLASHAN had participated in the college entrance exam scheme, but that McGLASHAN had not advised his own son of that fact, and that
McGLASHAN’s
son thus
“had no idea …
that
you helped him on the ACT.”
6
Excerpts of wiretap interceptions and consensual recordings set forth herein are based on draft transcripts of those recordings.
 
Words matter to donors, and to college admissions. There are building at USC with the names "Spielberg" and "Lucas" on them, but none with the name "Huffman" or "Loughlin."

I can think of many private colleges that would accept a student with iffy academics whose parents made an unrestricted million-dollar donation and agreed to pay the full rate on tuition and fees. Maybe not Yale, though - the bar there may be a little higher.
 
Bribing you way in has been going on forever, guess somebody in the FBI got wise:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...1c9942-44d1-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html

"The Justice Department on Tuesday charged 50 people — including two television stars — with being part of a long-running bribery scheme to get privileged children with lackluster grades into big-name colleges and universities.

The alleged crimes included cheating on entrance exams, as well as bribing college officials to say certain students were coming to compete on athletic teams when those students were not in fact athletes, officials said. Numerous schools were targeted, including Georgetown University, Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and UCLA, among others.

Boston’s U.S. attorney, Andrew Lelling, call it the largest-ever college admissions scam prosecuted by the Justice Department. Of the 50 people charged as part of the FBI’s Operation Varsity Blues, 33 were parents, officials said, warning that the investigation is ongoing and that others could be charged.

The massive scheme was discovered accidentally by the FBI — while working an unrelated undercover operation, officials said. That tip led to a sprawling, nationwide corruption probe.

These parents are a catalogue of wealth and privilege,” said Lelling. “This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud. There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy, and I’ll add there will not be a separate criminal justice system, either.”

None of the students were charged because prosecutors said their parents were the scheme’s principal actors.

Court filings released Tuesday paint an ugly picture of privileged parents committing crimes to get their children into selective schools. Among those charged are actresses Felicity Huffman, best known for her role on the television show “Desperate Housewives,” and Lori Loughlin, who appeared on “Full House,” according to court documents. A representative for Loughlin declined to comment. A representative for Huffman did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Two participants in the scheme are scheduled to enter guilty pleas Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors said. One is William Singer, a well-connected college admissions adviser and the central figure in the scheme, officials said. He is accused of disguising the bribery scheme as a charity, enabling parents to deduct the bribes from their taxes.

Singer is charged with taking about $25 million from 2011 to 2018 — paying some of it to college coaches or standardized-testing officials for their help rigging the admissions process and pocketing the rest, according to the criminal complaint. He allegedly disguised the money using a nonprofit, the Key Worldwide Foundation, prosecutors said, characterizing it as a slush fund for bribes.

One of the cooperating witnesses, according to court documents, is a former head coach of Yale’s women’s soccer team, who pleaded guilty in the case nearly a year ago and has since been helping FBI agents gather evidence. That coach, Rudolph Meredith, allegedly took a $400,000 bribe to pretend to place a student on the team and help get her into the school, even though the student did not play competitive soccer, officials said. The student’s parents paid $1.2 million in bribes, officials said.

Some of the defendants are accused of bribing college entrance exam administrators to facilitate cheating — by having a smarter student take the test, providing students with answers to exams or correcting their answers after they had completed the exams, according to the criminal complaint filed in federal court.

Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, were accused of paying $500,000 in bribes so their two daughters would be designated as recruits for the University of Southern California crew team — even though they were not part of the team. That helped the pair get into USC, according to the complaint.

Some of the money was directed to Donna Heinel, a USC athletics official, the complaint alleges. In a statement, USC officials said the school is cooperating with the federal investigation and has launched its own review.

“We understand that the government believes that illegal activity was carried out by individuals who went to great lengths to conceal their actions from the university,” the statement says. “USC is conducting an internal investigation and will take employment actions as appropriate. USC is in the process of identifying any funds received by the university in connection with this alleged scheme. Additionally, the university is reviewing its admissions processes broadly to ensure that such actions do not occur going forward.”

Joint statement from UCLA and UCLA Athletics regarding Department of Justice investigation
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/joint-statement-from-ucla-and-ucla-athletics
 
Yeah, I know I gotta be careful about confirmation bias, but this incident (while not proof) does support a few mechanism I've speculated are at work now days:

1. The pendulum was really swung from the everyone-gets-a-trophy 90s to the current hypercompetitive/parents-buying-kids fornite coaches era.
2. College competition, particularly among the upper middle class and wealthy, has gotten really crazy.
3. This competition has downstream effects on kids soccer because a lot of the soccer craziness (whether the pay-to-play industry, drop out rate, club shifting, obsession with winning and moving up in flights) is fueled by college admissions.

I suspect this is a story with legs because the upper middle class has largely been the ones fueling the college admissions craziness (at times to the detriment of the working class, who can't keep up with the private schools and kids activities, and may lack affirmative action and other preferences available to the working poor). To hear that the wealthy have been actively cheating to get their kids preferred treatment is really going to tick them off. And since many of the television commentators/journalists/opinion writers are in the upper middle class, it's gonna become a thing.
 
The US Attorney also said "this is not about paying for buildings with your name on it." In other words, the extremely wealthy have always had legal, tax-deductible ways to achieve this result. This is about the very rich (but not very smart) trying to level the playing field with the extremely wealthy.
From New York Post: "After she was admitted in January 2018, Singer mailed Meredith a check for $400,000, according to the papers"
Definitely not the smartest criminal mastermind. What kind of idiot takes a $400K bride in a CHECK?
 
I can think of many private colleges that would accept a student with iffy academics whose parents made an unrestricted million-dollar donation and agreed to pay the full rate on tuition and fees. Maybe not Yale, though - the bar there may be a little higher.
What private colleges are you thinking of?
 
Dersch has a very good take on FoxNews....if I were a gambler, I'd say he's right about where this takes us.....nutshell: the very rich looking to gain an advantage against the super buy-a-building rich.

 
In the complaint I read that many of the kids did not know their parents were cheating for them...really sad...

From the complaint:

"Court-authorized wiretap:
6
CAPLAN And it works? CW-1 Every time. (laughing) CAPLAN (laughing) CW-1
I mean, I’m sure I did 30 of them at different, you know, dates because there’s
different dates,
and they’re all families like yours, and they’re all kids that wouldn’t have perform[ed] a
s well, and then they did really well, and it was like,
the kids thought, and it was so funny ’cause the kids will call me and say, “Maybe
I
should do that again. I did pretty well and if I took it again, I’ll do better even.”
Right? And they just have no
idea that they didn’t even get the score that they
thought they got."

Indeed, in many cases, CW-
1’s clients referred other parents to him, or inquired directly about other parents’
involvement in the scheme. For example, as set forth in greater detail below, defendant ...HUNEEUS, Jr., told CW-1, in substance, that he was aware that McGLASHAN had participated in the college entrance exam scheme, but that McGLASHAN had not advised his own son of that fact, and that
McGLASHAN’s
son thus
“had no idea …
that
you helped him on the ACT.”
6
Excerpts of wiretap interceptions and consensual recordings set forth herein are based on draft transcripts of those recordings.
Oh, the kids knew...they had to know. I don't buy that they were that clueless to think that they can achieve a 400 point difference betw
een their PSAT and SATs on their first try. Also, I'm sure they knew where they stood academically. I don't feel sorry for any of the parents or kids involve. This story is so sad and depressing to me. I'm even further disappointed in the soccer coaches that were part of this bribery. Knowing how hard most kids work on their academics and playing....the sacrifices involved for the kid and parent...I'm just speechless. I wish I could articulate my feelings better but I'm just disgusted right now. Aaaargh.
 
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