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 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.”
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.
Some parents would 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, the sailing coach at Stanford University. 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.
Why is it even okay to donate anything. I say if you want to donate cool, do it after your kids are out of the college, otherwise I look at it as buying your kids spot in that college. Also I don’t think anyone should get in just because a parent went to school there. Another point, this kind of thing starts in kindergarten, c’mon everyone knows in small town USA it’s all about money, and whatever makes people important in that town ie. religion or family name, and lots of time whether your parents are liberal or conservative.