Feds uncover massive college entrance exam cheating plot

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-uncover-massive-college-entrance-exam-cheating-plot-n982136

March 12, 2019, 10:13 AM EDT / Updated March 12, 2019, 3:51 PM EDT
By Tom Winter, Pete Williams, Julia Ainsley and Rich Schapiro

Hollywood actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman are among 50 people charged in a $25 million college entrance exam cheating scheme, according to court documents unsealed in Boston on Tuesday.

The alleged scam focused on getting students admitted to elite universities as recruited athletes, regardless of their athletic abilities, and helping potential students cheat on their college exams, according to the indictment.

Authorities said the FBI investigation, code-named Operation Varsity Blues, uncovered a network of wealthy parents who paid thousands of dollars to a California man who boosted their children's chances of gaining entrance into elite colleges, such as Yale and Stanford, by paying people to take tests for their children, bribing test administrators to allow that to happen, and bribing college coaches and administrators to identify the applicants as athletes.

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Lelling stressed that the colleges themselves are not targets of the investigation.

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Some of the parents spent between $200,000 to $6.5 million to ensure that their children received guaranteed admission at the schools of their choice, John Bonavolonta, FBI special agent in charge, said.

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Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 to bolster their two daughters' chances of gaining admission to the University of Southern California, court papers say. Huffman and her husband, actor William H. Macy, paid $15,000 to get one of their daughters unlimited time for her SAT test, prosecutors say.

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The plot involved students who attended or were seeking to attend Georgetown, Stanford, Yale, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of San Diego, USC, the University of Texas and Wake Forest University, according to federal prosecutors.

Of the 50 people charged so far, 33 are parents and nine were college coaches. The others were a mix of test administrators and the scheme's main figures, authorities said.

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Prosecutors said the scam was masterminded by Singer, the founder of a for-profit college preparation business based in Newport Beach, California.

Parents paid Singer $15,000 to $75,000 per test for someone else to take the SAT or ACT exams in place of their college-age sons or daughters, according to the court papers.

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From 2011 to last month, parents paid Singer roughly $25 million to bribe coaches and university administrators to "designate their children as recruited athletes, or other favored admissions categories," according to the court papers.

In some cases, Singer’s associates created fake athletic "profiles" in an effort to improve the students' chances of getting accepted by making them appear to be highly successful high school athletes.

Singer would then bribe college coaches to allot slots meant for incoming athletes to the children of the wealthy parents, authorities said.

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Besides the actresses, other defendants include Gamal Abdelaziz, the former president and CEO of Wynn Resorts Development; Gordon Caplan, co-chairman of the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP; and Gregory Abbot, CEO of the International Dispensing Company.

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