A college admissions scheme involving celebrities, business executives, and other powerful figures rocked the news world on Tuesday. Too bad the scandal is old news.
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According to court documents, a nationwide FBI probe has uncovered a massive bribery scheme which guaranteed the admission of celebrity children into some of the country’s most elite colleges and universities. At least 3 dozen parents — including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli — were charged with conspiracy and other crimes for allegedly using millions of dollars in bribery money to get their children into such schools as Yale, Georgetown, and the University of Southern California.
Here’s how the scheme worked:
William Rick Singer set up a sham charity in order to launder money received from high-profile parents for his services. He would then hire third-party individuals to fraudulently take the SAT or ACT college admissions exams on behalf of his clients’ children, or pay college coaches to admit the children under the guise of a made-up “impressive” athletic resume. In either scenario, the high-profile children would receive admittance to the college of their choice via the extremely impressive but faked SAT/ACT scores, or a fraudulent athletic ability they didn’t actually have.
On Tuesday, Singer pleaded guilty to all the charges against him, the actresses and other parents were formally charged, and the news media went bonkers over the news that a scheme to get unqualified kids into college could even exist.
Get real!
This so-called scheme/scandal is nothing new. Parents have been getting their “not-so-bright” children into Ivy League schools and other prestigious colleges and universities for decades simply by making a large donation to the School of Business or building a library with the family name attached to it. Perhaps this was the first time a 3rd party individual was used as somewhat of a “middleman,” but a go-between has never really been necessary for the right parents with the right amount of cash.
Celebrated playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, best known for the films Glengarry Glen Ross and Wag the Dog, issued perhaps the best response to the scandal via an open letter. Here is a portion of his words:
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I worked for very many years in and around our Elite Universities. I am able to report that their admissions policies are an unfortunate and corrupt joke.
Harvard was once sued for restricting the admission of qualified Jews; a contest currently being waged by Asians.
The unqualified may be accepted for many reasons, among them, as Legacies, and on account of large donations made by their parents. I do not see the difference between getting a kid into school by bribing the Building Committee, and by bribing someone else. But, apparently, the second is against the Law. So be it.
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And so, there you have it. The so-called college admissions scandal is nothing more than an old elitists trick that’s been around for decades. After all, does anyone actually believe that Donald Trump got into The Wharton School and Jared Kushner got into Harvard solely on their educational merits?
And so, there you have it. The so-called college admissions scandal is nothing more than an old elitists trick that’s been around for decades. After all, does anyone actually believe that Donald Trump got into The Wharton School and Jared Kushner got into Harvard solely on their educational merits? […]-DJ
Puleeze! What “educational merits”…? DJ, there you go again being much too kind.
Does anyone actually believe that Trump even graduated High School? Puleeze! Clearly the man is intellectually deficient -as probably, so too, are most of the people he surrounds himself with.
But you are so right….rich people have been running this game “for decades.” Their own version of “affirmative action” huh?/sarc
You said it exactly right Truth. This is their affirmative action. Buy anything you want if you got the cash. Everybody was so shocked over this when it came out but they have been cheating their way through everything for years.
So now that we’ve got confirmation of what WE’ve always known it seems pretty clear to me now…..
WE should have seen the current mucked-up state of Our country coming. Trump epitomizes the type of people who are actually running this country. Rich and super-rich narcissists who are first-and-foremost Know-NOTHINGS, Liars and Thieves. Frauds.
Then throw in your assorted crooks, Nutjobs and sexual predators of every ilk -you’ve got what passes for the “elites” “influencers” “leaders” at the highest echelons in America today. LOSERS who by virtue of their families wealth and name FAIL UPWARD in life…clean up to the White House.
Yes indeed. As a nation, We are right royally screwed for the foreseeable future.
Yahoo News:
For Singer’s services, the majority of parents paid between $250,000 and $400,000 per student, payments Singer in part used to bribe college officials, Division I coaches and college exam administrators.
He counseled parents to get letters from therapists requesting their children receive more time to take admissions exams. He paid confederates to register for online high school classes in the students’ names, to improve their grade-point averages. And he worked with parents to create fake athletic profiles for their children, including staging photographs and Photoshopping students’ faces onto stock images, to fill slots allotted by schools for student athletes.
Lelling implicated the head women’s soccer coach at Yale who “in exchange for $400,000 accepted an applicant as a recruit for the Yale women’s team despite knowing the applicant did not even play competitive soccer.”
Others charged include a senior associate athletic director at the University of Southern California (USC), Wake Forest’s women’s volleyball coach, tennis coaches from Georgetown and Texas, Stanford’s sailing coach and the coaches of USC’s men’s and women’s soccer and water polo teams. According to the indictment, they were allegedly bribed “to designate applicants as purported athletic recruits — regardless of their athletic abilities, and in some cases, even though they did not play the sport, they were purportedly recruited to play.”
Huffman, the Oscar-nominated actress, allegedly paid, together with her husband, $15,000 disguised as a charitable donation for her daughter to take the SAT at a “controlled” testing center where a special proctor would correct answers without the daughter’s knowledge. Huffman’s husband is the actor William H. Macy, who was not named or charged in the indictment.
Huffman and Loughlin were charged with mail fraud.
Loughlin, known for her role as Aunt Becky on “Full House,” and her fashion designer husband, 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,” according to the released indictment.
Loughlin’s daughters, Isabella Rose Giannulli, 20, and Olivia Jade Giannulli, 19, are both enrolled at University of Southern California.
Last year, before attending USC, Olivia Jade explained in a YouTube video that she wasn’t actually all that interested in education, preferring to concentrate on her career as a beauty influencer on YouTube. “With work, it’s going to be hard. My first week of school, I’m leaving to go to Fiji for work.”
She continued: “I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend. But I’m going to go in and talk to my deans and everyone and hope that I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of like game days, partying … I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”
Breaking News Update: Thurs. March 14, 2019 at about 12:38 PM
“Stanford students file class-action lawsuit over college admissions scandal”
CNN- Two Stanford University students filed a federal lawsuit seeking class-action status against the universities named in the college admissions scheme, saying their admissions process was “warped and rigged by fraud.”
Students Erica Olsen and Kalea Woods allege in part negligence, unfair competition and violations of consumer law, according to the suit filed Wednesday in US District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit asks for a variety of relief, including compensatory and punitive damages, restitution and other relief deemed proper by court.
The suit alleges Olsen and Woods have been damaged in that their degrees are not worth as much because prospective employers may question whether they were admitted to the school on their own merits “versus having parents who were willing to bribe school officials.”
The lawsuit names Stanford, the University of Southern California, UCLA, the University of San Diego, the University of Texas at Austin and Wake Forest, Yale and Georgetown universities as defendants. The schools were cited in the stunning nationwide conspiracy that federal prosecutors unveiled Tuesday. […]