Biggest US college fraud bust nets actors Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin

BOSTON - Federal authorities arrested dozens on Tuesday for a $25 million scheme to help wealthy Americans, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and some CEOs, cheat their children's way into elite universities, such as Yale and Stanford.

The largest college admissions fraud scam unearthed in US history was run out of a small college preparation company in Newport Beach, California that relied on bribes to sports coaches, phony test takers, and even doctored photos depicting non-athletic applicants as elite competitors to land college slots for the offspring of rich parents, prosecutors said.

"These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege," Andrew Lelling, the US attorney in Boston, said at a news conference. "For every student admitted through fraud, an honest, genuinely talented student was rejected."

William "Rick" Singer, 58, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges related to running the scheme through his Edge College & Career Network, which charged from $100,000 to as much as $2.5 million per child for the services, which were masked as contributions to a scam charity Singer runs.

"I was essentially buying or bribing the coaches for a spot," Singer said as he pleaded guilty to charges including racketeering, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. "And that occurred very frequently."

John Vandemoor, a former Stanford University sailing coach who worked with Singer, also pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy.

It was the latest in a series of scandals that have rocked the high-stakes, high-stress world of admissions to top colleges. Prosecutors in Boston in recent years have also charged Chinese nationals with cheating on entrance exams, while the College Board, which administers the SAT tests, was rocked in 2016 by a security breach that exposed hundreds of questions planned for tests.

Some 300 law enforcement agents swept across the country to make arrests in what agents code-named "Operation Varsity Blues." Huffman and Loughlin were due to appear in federal court in Los Angeles later on Tuesday, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors have so far named 33 parents, 13 coaches, and associates of Singer's business.

Other parents charged include Manuel Henriquez, the chief executive of specialty finance lender Hercules Capital; Gordon Caplan, the co-chairman of international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Bill McGlashan Jr., who heads a buyout investment arm of private equity firm TPG Capital; and Douglas Hodge, the former CEO of the investment management firm Pimco.

Representatives for the companies and for Huffman and Loughlin either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

The alleged masterminds of scam and parents who paid into it could all face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Huffman, a former best actress Oscar nominee who is married to actor William H. Macy, starred in ABC's "Desperate Housewives."

Loughlin, best known for her role in the ABC sitcom "Full House" and the recent Netflix sequel "Fuller House," is married to clothing company founder Mossimo Giannulli, who was also charged in the scheme.

'HELP THE WEALTHIEST'

On a call with a wealthy parent, prosecutors said, Singer summed up his business: "What we do is help the wealthiest families in the US get their kids into school ... my families want a guarantee."

Prosecutors said it was up to the universities what to do with students admitted through cheating.

Yale University and the University of Southern California (USC) said in separate statements that they were cooperating with investigators.

"The Department of Justice believes that Yale has been the victim of a crime perpetrated by its former women's soccer coach," Yale said in a statement.

The coach, Rudolph Meredith, resigned in November after 24 years running the women's soccer team. Meredith, who accepted a $400,000 bribe from Singer, is due to plead guilty, prosecutors said. His lawyer declined to comment.

Prosecutors said the scheme began in 2011 and also helped children get into the University of Texas, Georgetown University, Wake Forest University, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Part of the scheme involved advising parents to lie to test administrators that their child had learning disabilities that allowed them extra exam time.

The parents were then advised to choose one of 2 test centers that Singer's company said it had control over: one in Houston, Texas, and the other in West Hollywood, California.

Test administrators in those centers took bribes of tens of thousands of dollars to allow Singer's clients to cheat, often by arranging to have wrong answers corrected or having another person take the exam. Singer would agree with parents beforehand roughly what score they wanted the child to get.

In many cases, the students were not aware that their parents had arranged for the cheating, prosecutors said, although in other cases they knowingly took part. None of the children were charged on Tuesday.

Singer also helped parents stage photographs of their children playing sports or even Photoshopped children's faces onto images of athletes downloaded from the internet to exaggerate their athletic credentials.

Wake Forest said it had placed head volleyball coach Bill Ferguson on administrative leave after he was among the coaches accused of accepting bribes.

According to the criminal complaint, investigators heard McGlashan of TPG Capital listening to Singer tell him to send along pictures of his son playing sports that he could digitally manipulate to make a fake athletic profile.

"The way the world works these days is unbelievable," McGlashan said to Singer, according to court papers.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Hollywood stars among dozens charged over college entrance scam

NEW YORK -- "Desperate Housewives" star Felicity Huffman and fellow Hollywood actress Lori Loughlin were among dozens indicted Tuesday in a multi-million dollar scam to help children of the American elite cheat their way into top universities.

The accused, who also include chief executives, financiers, the chairman of a prominent law firm, a winemaker and fashion designer, allegedly cheated on admissions tests and arranged for bribes to get their children into prestigious schools including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Southern California, federal prosecutors said.

They paid a bogus charity run by Californian William Singer more than $25 million over seven years both to arrange for people to fix SAT and ACT entrance exams for their children, and also to bribe university sports coaches to recruit their children, even when the children were not qualified to play at that level.

The case sparked outrage across the country, especially among parents who stress about the intense competition for places in universities and, more broadly, about privileged behavior among the richest Americans.

In all, 50 people were charged: 33 parents who paid to give their kids undeserved entry into high-end college life; 13 university sports coaches and test organization operators; and Singer and three others who operated the fraudulent scheme.

Thirteen of those accused, including Huffman, were arrested and slated for arraignment late Tuesday in Los Angeles. Others appeared in courts in Boston, New York, Connecticut and elsewhere. Loughlin was not arrested because she was in Canada.

None of the universities or the companies who run the tests were implicated, and none of the students involved were charged.

"These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege," said Andrew Lelling, the US attorney in Boston, Massachusetts where the case was announced.

"Every year hundreds of thousands of hard-working, talented students strive for admission to elite schools," he said.

"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."

PREYING ON PARENTAL ANXIETY 

The scheme aimed to take advantage of the two years of the anxiety s parents across the United States often endure as they put high school-age children through the standardized tests needed to gain entry into heavily competitive colleges and universities.

Even legally, wealth plays a role. Parents who can afford to pay heavily for test preparation and have their children take the tests two or three times to better their scores.

In this case, however, Singer arranged for someone to take the test for the students, or paid insiders to fix their scores.

And, in a second part of the scheme, the "side door" operation, Singer would create bogus athletic profiles for the students and manage payoffs to university coaches in minor sports like soccer, crew, water polo and sailing so that the student could be accepted on that basis.

The payments were made to Singer's fake Newport Beach, California charity, Key Worldwide Foundation, and to non-profits managed by the coaches, which allowed the parents to deduct the payoffs and bribes from their taxes.

Singer agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges and assisted investigators in obtaining evidence against his customers and co-conspirators.

NOT 'SHAMELESS' 

Parents paid as little as $15,000 and as much as $6 million to benefit from Singer's operation.

Huffman, 56, and her husband William Macy, the star of Showtime's hit series "Shameless," paid $15,000 for their first daughter to perform well on the test, but decided not to do the same with their second daughter. Macy was mentioned in the case but not charged.

Loughlin, the 54-year-old star of "Full House," and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli allegedly paid $500,000 to gain their two daughters entry into University of Southern California as coxswains for crew teams -- a sport they hadn't participated in before.

Gordon Caplan, co-chairman of New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, allegedly paid $75,000 to have his daughter's test grades fixed.

And William McGlashan, an executive at the huge investment group TPG Capital who specialized in technology investments, allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for both testing and being placed in University of Southern California as a student athlete.

"What is going to happen when they see his application, he'll be flagged as an athlete," Singer told him in a phone conversation recorded by investigators.

"But once he gets here, he just goes, he doesn't go to athletic orientation, He goes to the regular orientation like all my other kids just did... and everything's fine."

Coaches, including the women's soccer coach at Yale University and the sailing coach at Stanford University, took between $200,000 and $400,000 to accept the students onto their teams.

Some attempted to ply the sport and then quit; some claimed injuries and never joined the teams, others, Lelling said, "simply never showed up" to play.

source: news.abs-cbn.com