Hat tip Hardscrabble Farmer
Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were among more than four dozen people charged in a nationwide college admissions cheating scandal that involved wealthy individuals paying up to $6.5 million to place their children into elite universities, according to court records revealed Tuesday.
The alleged scam — which placed students into top colleges such as Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, University of Southern California, UCLA and the University of Texas — was run by William Rick Singer, from California, who helped parents get their children admission through bribes, court documents unsealed in Boston showed. Officials have been investigating the case, named “Operation Varsity Blues,” for more than a year.
Singer, who authorities said will plead guilty to racketeering, ran the charity, Key Worldwide Foundation, which received $25 million in total to guarantee the admissions, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said during a Tuesday news conference. The charitable foundation was allegedly used as a front to run the scam.
“This is a case where [the parents] flaunted their wealth, sparing no expense to cheat the system so they could set their children up for success with the best money can buy,” Joseph Bonavolonta from the FBI Boston Field Office said in a Tuesday news conference.
Most of the students did not know their admission to the school was due to a bribe, authorities said, but in some cases, the children and their parents took part in the scheme.
“Singer would accommodate what parents wanted to do,” Lelling said, adding that it “appears that the schools are not involved” except for a USC administrator who was charged.
Singer’s college admissions cheating scam allegedly involved extensive coordination with parents. Lelling said Singer had a knack for making fake credentials look realistic enough as to not invite scrutiny.
The children’s parents would allegedly pay a specified amount of money fully aware it would be used to gain college admission. The money would then go toward an SAT or ACT administrator or a college athletic coach who would fake a profile for the prospective student — regardless of their athletic ability, according to the charging documents.
“There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy and there will not be a separate criminal justice system either,” Lelling said. “We’re not talking about donating a building so a school is more likely to take your son or daughter, we’re talking about deception or fraud.”
On a call with one parent, prosecutors said, Singer described the business simply: “What we do is help the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids into school… my families want a guarantee.”
Singer would help his clients’ children by having another individual take SAT or ACT tests on behalf of the students, officials said. Parents would allegedly pay up to $75,000 for each test and wire money to “charitable accounts.”
“Singer used the purported charitable donations from parents, at least in part, to bribe two SAT and ACT test administrators,” court documents stated.
He would discuss with his clients what SAT or ACT score they desired for their children that were impressive but “not too impressive.” He would then instruct Mark Riddell, of Palmetto, Florida, to take the exams for the students, or “replace the students’ exam responses with his own.” Riddell had been working with Singer since 2011, documents stated.
Some parents would also take their children to therapists paid by Singer in order to receive notes saying the prospective students required extra time to take standardized tests.
Among the college coaches involved in the alleged scheme was Rudy Meredith, the former head women’s soccer coach at Yale, and John Vandemoer, Standford University’s sailing coach. The California university said the two prospective students Vandemoer, who has since been fired, had helped did not attend the school.
Singer would bribe the coaches to fill slots the universities allocated for new players with his clients’ children. To evade suspicion, the coaches and Singer would tell the prospective students to pose for pictures or would alter stock images and photoshop the child’s face onto an athlete, to support the athletic-based admission.
For one applicant, Meredith — who resigned from his position in November — created a fake athletic profile and said the person was a recruit for the Yale women’s soccer team even though the applicant “did not play competitive soccer,” officials said.
Singer gave Meredith $400,000 after the student was admitted to Yale, court documents stated.
A Georgetown tennis coach received bribes between 2012 and 2018 from Singer that amounted to more than $2.7 million, according to the documents.
“In exchange for the bribes, the Georgetown coach designated approximately 12 applicants as recruits for the Georgetown tennis team, including some who did not play tennis competitively, thereby facilitating their admission to the university,” documents read.
Some of the “student-athletes” who were enrolled simply never showed up for practice, while others pretended to be injured. Some played briefly, then quit, Lelling said.
Huffman and her husband, actor William H. Macy, were accused of taking advantage of the SAT and ACT. Macy was not among those charged Tuesday.
The two parents allegedly helped their daughter with her college admission by making a “purported charitable contribution of $15,000…to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme,” the documents said. “Huffman later made arrangements to pursue the scheme a second time, for her younger daughter, before deciding not to do so.”
In a January interview with Parade, Macy discussed how “stressful” applying to colleges had been.
“She’s going to go to college…We’re right now in the thick of college application time, which is so stressful,” Macy said. “I am voting that once she gets accepted, she maybe takes a year off. God doesn’t let you be 18 twice…But it’s just my opinion, and we’ll see what she wants to do, what Felicity thinks and how the chips fall.”
The court documents also stated that “[Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli] agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team — despite the fact that they did not participate in crew — thereby facilitating their admission to USC.”
Lelling said the case is still an active investigation and there could be more parents and coaches involved. The vast majority of the children accepted as part of the alleged admissions scheme are still enrolled and active students.
Several colleges, including Yale, University of Texas and USC, released statements following Tuesday’s news conference saying they were “victims” of the bribery scheme.
“As the indictment makes clear, the Department of Justice believes that Yale has been the victim of a crime perpetrated by its former women’s soccer coach. The university has cooperated fully in the investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case moves forward,” Yale University spokesman Tom Conroy said in a statement.
USC said it will be conducting its own internal investigation and “identifying any funds received by the university in connection with this alleged scheme.”
Stanford University said in its statement: “Based on the Department of Justice investigation to date, we have no evidence that the alleged conduct involves anyone else at Stanford or is associated with any other team. However, we will be undertaking an internal review to confirm that.”
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You can not be serious. Do you honestly believe that rich people couldn’t pay their way for their children? Do you honestly believe that the FBI can catch some people who pay to have their kids go to elite schools, but somehow can’t find seth riche’s murderer or hillary clintons emails.
Those schools have always been a pay for play scam and the FBI knows it. Hell, the FBI probably administers it for the elite so you and your demon spawn can’t get in.
Gotta love rich Socialist.
I don’t understand what the difference is between this and all 31(thousand?) flavors of affirmative action?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdplj5PhioY
It is affirmative action that reduced the number of admission slots available to white applicants so the beautiful people found a way to circumvent the systems they helped put in place to ensure their white kids could still go to ivy league schools. Genuine high achieving kids who didn’t come from rich families were shut out of good schools, falsely believing that merit and hard work were all it took to gain admission to so-called elite schools.
There has to be more to the story than this. Why would anyone care if rich douchebags bribed other douchebags to get their douchebag crotch gremlin into a douchebag university. How many agents worked on this?
protocol has to be followed,only legal bribes are acceptable–
furthermore,many attys whom i have met are both naive & very straitlaced,i wouldn’t be surprised if this us atty really believes that this is a terrible crime–
except for opening doors,college is worthless–
But that’s just it –
Suppose your little Johnny or Suzie is really bright, but you’re not wealthy. Suppose further that he/she/it gets into Yale on a scholarship of some kind, for being the best mathematician / scientist / (god forbid) athlete in the whole state of Kentucky – somehow, their slip got chosen.
Your little Johnny or Suzie just won one of life’s lotteries – he/she/it will, simply by being in a position of being able to MEET one of the rich scions attending Yale, a LOT more likely to –
marry rich – find a rich-making opportunity – make a rich-making connection that leads to a wealthy life.
If your child is the best ___ in Kentucky but one of those brain-dead rich-kids got their slot by cheating on the SAT / admissions process / bribing their way in with their parents money, YOUR KID GOT SCREWED. And everyday, honest people understand this.
There’s no way this blows over – it touches a nerve. And it should lead to REAL penalties, for the parents and, if they knew, the kids.
I think if you just them you’re a queer / tranny / socialist / identifying as black, you can get in with a full scholarship.
Is that how you got in, Dutchy?
He’s a big man, morons. He knows I’m joking.
“There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy and there will not be a separate criminal justice system either,” Lelling said.
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum- Can’t have the serf’s acting like congressional representatives !!
Do you think they’d have any trouble finding tutors?
?itok=9HwNhwW7
I’d tutor the shit out of the one on the left.
Typical macho bravado. In reality, you’d be worn out in 5 minutes.
But they’d be 5 really good minutes – for me, at least.
Stop exaggerating. 5 minutes? After the deed, you would have a good 4:40 left.
Quick Draw McGraw? Making a mess upon the removal of the tighty whiteys?
Can always answer if she rings the bell for round II second chance.
Might need one of them little blue pills.
Take it with plenty of water.
If’n it gets stuck in your throat, you might have a stiff neck for 4 hours.
Maybe I would and maybe I would.
Iska – your five good minutes would consist of 10 seconds of action and 290 seconds of reminiscing. You only wish you had the sundown to sun up stamina of an average Choctaw.
Lol. Good one, Kemosabe!
Maybe I would and maybe I wood.
Fixed it for ya.
Yea, me too. If they called me up I’d be over there likitty slit.
lickety split works too, it’s called a double-entente, heh.
why discriminate iska,let’s do all 3–
Call me old fashioned, but they should have gotten into college the traditional way, a blowjob. Sadly, now it’s all about the money.
I almost asked if that’s the way you, but I suspect you’re one of the two peeps who upvote my comments so let’s forget I asked anything. That joke was worthy of Iska.
Note the Kardashianification on her, I could call it Latinafication but the Kardios all look like this. America’s women now all seem to be Kardashian Klones. Kylie is making a mint selling them the look. Why is Yokes silent on this issue, isn’t it a violation of the 14 words to turn white girls into Latinas?
Please buy my e-book Field Guide to Latinas and Kardashian Klone Identification.
Travis the tutor titillatingly touches tender titties tantalizingly.
Sounds suspiciously like Kim Jong Uncola
You have a good ear for the written word.
Timothy the Tutor would have been much more properlike. Travis seems so unalliterative?
Those are the daughters she had to pay five hundred grand to get into college. Geez, doesn’t anybody know how a nightclub works?
They must be dumb as bricks.
at least two different fathers.
our elites are a fine bunch.
No, one looks like the Italian father and the other like the Irish mother.
Gotta donate enough for a building or some scholarships, then it’s perfectly ok if they allow all of your unqualified progeny in.
Right. Why is a $15,000 bribe to a tennis coach illegal but a few $million for a new library makes it all OK? What that tells me is that the celebrities are only being punished for one thing – being cheap.
Remember, whenever satisfaction is offered up to the public..watch what the other hand is doing.
looking back, i’m proud to say that both my sailing instructor and silverware etiquette coach were above reproach.
Obviously this casts Llpoh’s degree in an entirely new light, knowing that he probably used some of that casino money funneled through this Jewish cabal to gain entry to the upper crust’s inner sanctum. Now we just gotta figure out how he wrangled that Phi Beta Kappa designation.
Llpoh’s Dartmouth Admissions Office meeting
?itemid=4567093
Wonder if he faked membership in his hs cheerleading squad?
lpoh & trent lott,go team go–
Of course I didn’t fake it – I was a real member of the squad. While youse dicks were pulling your puds, I was showering with all those hot babes and soaping up their backs and… well, I will just leave you to imagine the rest.
but the boy babes had appendages,you weren’t showering w/the ones who were short changed–
Shows what you don’t know. I had a special invite. Womenz love me. They cannot keep their hands off me. HSF says it is a burden we Alpha males have to carry.
You picked a fake Indian on purpose? Am I to assume LLPOH is not really NA? I wonder if we can get his long-form CIB.
Combat Infantryman’s Badge?
Crikey, It’s Big
Remind me again – is Drexel a 4 year school? You’re just jealous.
Now that’s funny
5 year co-OP school. I got in because I was Irish.
They let in micks? I figured you fibbed about going there. What next, Injuns? Spics? Ragheads? Dot heads? Standards have dropped everywhere.
Iska – blow me. Choctaws have no casinos. I had to use the peyote money funneled through the cabals. Re the Phi Beta, I only took courses taught by hot young female professors, who expected me to work day, and especially, night.
You guys need to open casinos AND run peyote. Peyote – that’s one of the few drugs I haven’t tried – although I stopped all of that back in the Reagan administration.
Once again liberal hypocrisy. Whatever they accuse others of doing.Be sure they are doing it.
Thankfully the universities have clean hands in this situation. It would be terrible to have our most prestigious institutions be corrupt. (Sarc off). This is just a diversion, it will disappear within a month.
I wish someone would victimize me by giving me lots o moola.
I wonder if Lori needs bailed out. I’m there for you, Lori.
“There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy and there will not be a separate criminal justice system either,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…
Oh yes, with another rich vein of sarcastic hypocrisy having been struck with the following:
“Several colleges, including Yale, University of Texas and USC, released statements following Tuesday’s news conference saying they were “victims” of the bribery scheme.”
The Collegiate Society for the Encouragement of Elite Victim Status, Inc.
Such a business. What would you expect from these institutions when the freight is $250,000.00 for a four-year degree in Feminist Racial Equality Economics and other such codswallop.
After reading this I need a safe space, blankie, and binky.
Several colleges, including Yale, University of Texas and USC, released statements following Tuesday’s news conference saying they were “victims” of the bribery scheme.
“As the indictment makes clear, the Department of Justice believes that Yale has been the victim of a crime perpetrated by its former women’s soccer coach. The university has cooperated fully in the investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case moves forward,” Yale University spokesman Tom Conroy said in a statement.
USC said it will be conducting its own internal investigation and “identifying any funds received by the university in connection with this alleged scheme.”
Stanford University said in its statement: “Based on the Department of Justice investigation to date, we have no evidence that the alleged conduct involves anyone else at Stanford or is associated with any other team. However, we will be undertaking an internal review to confirm that.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket, we’re victims, yeah, victims of parents who jammed millions of dollars into our pockets when nobody was looking. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
When you have to bribe the University of Texas to admit your kids, you have kids that are dumber than a sack of rocks. Seriously, the admission standards there are not exactly among the elite. Math plus verbal of 1150 = automatic admission at UT.
These are half literate Hollywood party girls. I live around people like this – most can’t spell their own name.
I’m thinking about moving out there and becoming a movie star. Any suggestions? I already got the yarmulke.
Not the main campus.
Double secret probation should fix it.
Next the FBI will have a case of how much former Yale president Giamatti paid to get his son into Hollywood.
Half a million dollars to get your child in to freakin’ USC! What kind of moron does that?
WE DO JIMMIE!
Whoa. Tell that sun soaked Cali chipmunk that Spring is almost here. No need to pack his cheeks with nuts, to bury, and forage for, in the winter months. It’s March.
He looks like he’s been taking jabs from Mike Tyson w a mouse under each peeper.
And WTF is up with your lid, Hollywood? Oughtta get back to the stylist, and take a lil more off the top. Nice ‘do.
What does she see in him? He must be loaded, or hung like a horse. Tongue like a lizard? Ass work like a sewing machine?
Must have sumfin. He sho ain’t handsome.
I got news for you, pretty boy, your future is in going gay. Women prefer ugly men with money, power or both.
And here I must pay my respects to Mrs. (Stella) Trambley – “Hector, you have no money, no looks, no brains, you cannot afford to (screw off).
Our teachers were rough, the Superintendent’s nephew was teaching 7th grade for a couple of years: I don’t give a damn and if you tell anybody I was cussing, I will call you a liar. To the fat kid: Katz, If I was you, I’d take a knife and end it all. To the short kid: Art, If I was you, I’d sue the city for making the curbs too high.
If one of my employees does something really really stupid and criminal, and someone innocent ends up dead, I must remember to scream “I am the victim here!”
Hell, if it is good enough for Yale, it must be good enough for me.
phuc you,
you’re a business man,you deserve it,you deserve to be punished in their place–
Aren’t you a businessman also, TR?
haven’t you heard of hypocrisy?
kinda like the guy at media matters beating the drum to get rid of tucker carlson for things he said years ago but senor mm has “forgotten” his many racial/ethnic slurs–
The nerve of those entitled Goyim! Don’t they know those slots are reserved for the Chosenites (with a few slots left over for the POCs)?
Woo hoo. Five hundred grand to get into a school I was actually PAID to go to (scholarship) back in the day-1980. I feel validated! Go Trojans!
I did not know that condom makers have a university. Guess they needed models for their micro sizes.
Can’t do it, man. Wearing a Trojan is like taking a bath with my socks on. Gotta go au naturahl. Unless we’re talking about nailing some strange. Then it’s best to wrap that rascal. The plague is still out there, in many forms. Don’t need no STDs.
You’re gonna need an ocean
Of Calamine lotion.
Be scratchin’ like hound
The minute ya start to mess around
Poison Ivy
Just ruminating.. what if this is an opening salvo and it is alleged vthat Trump’s kids got into college this way….hmm… never know what the FBI is up to.
Interesting no mention of Harvard. Squeaky clean, no doubt.
With the ethnic and religious, um, preferences at the ivy leagues about the only way for white kids to get in is to bribe somebody. No, really.
Why didn’t Lori just fuck the dean of admissions….you know, the old fashioned approach? I’m sure there would have been takers, male or female.
So how do these rich kids manage to pass classes for four years? Never mind, I went to FSU… This is True I swear on my Bible: I was waiting to ask a Professor a question after class and the girl ahead of me said “Is there any way I can physically pass your class?” and he said “You’ll have to come to my office”. I figure she got an “A”.
But, in the article, it says donating a building to get a child admitted is ok? Really?
Say it with me…g.r.e.e.d.
Fabulous. And if you aren’t quite convinced go look at Olivia Jade’s influencer channel, soak in what an entitled shallow brat she is, make note of her icky Bro boyfriend, their hotels, planes, ask youself if that looks anything like whatever post high school experience YOU had, and then think Hmm…Mommy’s in jail. What’s not to love.
Another example of how well socialism works for the wealthy .
Now how many really hard working kids studied their ass off got a great SAT & ACT score but we’re never considered and are now saddled with college loan debt . Fraud and bribery of this magnitude should see jail time .
Strange how our national law enforcement can dig this up and make something stick but they cannot find 10 or 20 MILLON people illegally working and living in our country . Also they cannot make anything stick to Clinton associated Arkinside victims but if Trump paid off a stripper he banged or a Supreme Court nominee played stick finger at a teenage beer bash OMG they spend millions on hearings investigations thousands of pages of documents hours of back and forth asking questions regarding events and situations that are 30 years old .
As the empire circles the drain , fights wars and engagements that have absolutely nothing to do with the true health , wealth and well being of the American people with a price tag that is astrinomical so we can have Somali Muslims in Minnesota and MS-13 operating around the nations capitol . Yes as our government sleeps at ever switch or gate we now have Congress reps that truly hate America and every one in it especially white Americans . Law enforcement militarized against the citizens they are sworn to protect and defend .
Yes ladies and gentlemen we have a front row seat to the twilights last gleaming and we did it to ourselves thru complacency !
Forget Me Not
Mr. Liberty and Anarchyst are 2 of the all time best commenters on TBP.
Keep it up guys.