Varsity Blues scandal

On March 12, 2019, U.S. federal prosecutors in the District of Massachusetts unsealed a series of indictments and complaints against 50 people as part of an ongoing investigation into a university and college admissions and testing bribery scandal. The indicted individuals include many prominent businesspeople and actors. The case marks the largest of its kind by the Justice Department in U.S. history.

Federal prosecutors allege that the parents of college applicants paid upwards of a total of $25 million in bribes to college officials between 2011 and 2018. Universities involved in the case include Georgetown, Stanford, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of San Diego, the University of Southern California (USC), the University of Texas at Austin, Wake Forest, and Yale. The FBI investigation was nicknamed "Operation Varsity Blues" in a nod to the 1999 film of the same name.

Discovery and scandal

Federal prosecutors in Boston on March 12, 2019 made a criminal complaint, charging 50 people with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 1349.

The FBI became aware of the alleged coordinated and organized national scam which began in 2011 until 2019, where parents of high school aged children would conspire with each other to use bribery and other forms of fraud to get their children admitted to top colleges and universities.

The 50 people charged by federal prosecutors included two Hollywood actresses: Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.

Allegations

Federal prosecutors alleged a bribery and college admission cheating scheme of three folds in nature:

• Bribing college entrance exam administrators in order to facilitate cheating on college and university entrance exams
• Bribing varsity coaches and administrators of elite universities and colleges in order to nominate unqualified applicants as recruited athletes or favored candidates, hence, facilitating those applicants' admission into those schools
• Using a charitable organization to conceal the source and nature of laundered bribery payments

Court documents unsealed in March 2019 detail a scheme wherein wealthy parents bribed admissions testing officials, athletics staff, and coaches at universities in order to gain admission for their children to prestigious universities. The enterprise was led by William Rick Singer, a then 58-year old resident of Newport Beach, California, who ran Key Worldwide Foundation, a nonprofit organization previously granted 501(c)(3) status, which allowed it to avoid federal income taxes and allowed Key clients to deduct their "donations" from personal federal income taxes. The Key Enterprise also included The Edge College & Career Network, a limited liability company registered in 2012.

Methods of fraudulent admission

Singer primarily utilized two separate fraudulent techniques to help clients' children gain admission to elite universities. The first involved cheating on the SAT and ACT, which effectively have a duopoly on college admissions testing in the US. Because the tests are given at many schools across the country, it was not feasible for Singer to infiltrate all locations.

Thus, Singer worked with psychologists to complete the detailed paperwork required to certify client's children as having a learning disability, giving them access to accommodations for taking the tests; Singer noted that this could be re-used to fraudulently obtain similar benefits at university. Once the paperwork was complete, Singer coached clients to make up false travel plans to get their children's tests relocated to two centers under his control: West Hollywood and Houston. Depending on the client's preferences, the child was either involved directly of the fraud, or, in many cases, the fraud was kept secret and corrupt proctors altered tests after the fact.

According to recorded phone calls included in court filings, Singer claimed that the practice fraudulently obtaining accommodations such as extra testing time, intended for those with bona fide learning disabilities, is widespread outside of his particular scheme:

Yeah, everywhere around the country. What happened is, all the wealthy families that figured out that if I get my kid tested and they get extended time, they can do better on the test. So most of these kids don’t even have issues, but they’re getting time. The playing field is not fair.

The second method used by Singer involved directly bribing college employees themselves. At target institutions, coaches and athletic staff had the ability to submit a certain number of recruit names to admissions, which would then view the applications in light of that status. Signer used the Key money laundry to pay coaches a bribe for labeling applicants as athletes for purposes of gaining admission; he fabricated profiles highlighting each applicant's purported athletic prowess. Among those charged in the March 12 release were coaches and staff at Georgetown, USC, UCLA, Wake Forest, Stanford, and Texas. In one such incident, the men's tennis coach at the University of Texas at Austin accepted approximately $100,000 in exchange for designating an applicant as a recruit for the Texas Longhorns tennis team, thus facilitating their admittance into the university. A similar situation occurred at Yale, where the head coach of the women's soccer team allegedly accepted a $400,000 bribe for falsely identifying an applicant as a recruit. Senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel and water polo coach Jovan Vavic, both of USC, allegedly received $1.3 million and $250,000, respectively, for similar incidents. They were indicted alongside former USC women's soccer coaches Ali Khosroshahin and Laura Janke.

Besides bribery, parents would allegedly have third parties take classes on behalf of their children and submit those results to colleges and universities as if they were from their own kids. The scam allegedly also involved submitting fraudulent exam scores and grades including fake awards and athletic achievements. In one such case, noted private equity investor Bill McGlashan discussed using Photoshop to create a fake profile for his son as a football player to help him get into USC or Stanford.

William Singer was charged with racketeering conspiracy for his role as the organizer of this scheme. Money was passed through a laundry company formed by Singler, the Key Worldwide Foundation, as charitable donations. Singer pleaded guilty on March 12, 2019 in the U.S. District Court in Boston to four felony counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of justice. He faces a maximum of 65 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine.

People involved

50 people have been charged as part of the ongoing investigations. Of these, 33 are parents of college applicants and nine were collegiate coaches.

Notable indicted individuals included:

• Jane Buckingham
• Mossimo Giannulli
• Douglas M. Hodge
• Felicity Huffman
• Lori Loughlin
• Bill McGlashan
• Jorge Salcedo

In addition to Singer himself, who organized much of the enterprise's operation, Key Enterprise employed a man to fraudulently take admission tests, impersonating the client's children, and paid Educational Testing Service and ACT contractors to deliberately misadminister the tests.

Public reactions

Elizabeth Warren, United States Senator for Massachusetts (where all criminal cases were filed), told news media that the scandal represented, "just one more example of how the rich and powerful know how to take care of their own." Alan Dershowitz, a professor of law at Harvard University, claimed it was "the worst scandal involving elite universities in the history of the United States."

See also

• College admissions in the United States

External links

• Investigations of College Admissions and Testing Bribery Scheme, United States Department of Justice – contains charging documents and case status of all defendants criminally implicated in the scandal
• District Court docket, No. 1:19-mj-06087 (D. Mass.)