Varsity Blues scandal timeline
Feds first discovered the college admissions scandal two years ago in a Boston hotel room, secretly recording a Yale soccer coach describing the bribe. Two years later, prosecutors have secured guilty pleas from over half of the scandal’s 52 defendants.
■ April 12, 2018: Yale soccer coach Rudolph “Rudy” Meridith is secretly recorded by feds in a Boston hotel room offering to secure a Yale applicant’s bogus admission for $450,000.
■ Sept. 21, 2018: Rick Singer is approached by feds while meeting with Meridith, who is already cooperating with agents, and flips six days later.
■ March 2019: Parents, college coaches, officials and test takers are arrested across the country as feds hand down fraud and money laundering counts in the scandal dubbed “Varsity Blues.”
■ April 3, 2019: Defendants including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin make their first court appearance in Boston with markedly different attitudes.
■ June 12, 2019: Stanford sailing coach John Vandemoer avoids prison time in the first sentencing of the scandal for receiving $610,000 to recruit bogus applicants to his sailing team.
■ Sept. 12, 2019: “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman sentenced to 14 days in prison for paying a corrupt test proctor $15,000 to boost her daughter’s SAT score.
■ Feb. 27: A federal judge orders an October trial date for Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli.
■ May 20: Loughlin and Giannulli sign a plea agreement, tentatively agreeing to prison sentences for six-figure bribes to secure daughters’ bogus admission as crew recruits to the University of Southern California.