Students allege Stanford, other elite schools denied them fair admission process.

Complaints: Scheme denied fair chance to attend elite schools

Students and their parents who say the massive college admissions scandal cheated them have filed class-action lawsuits against those involved in the alleged scheme in which rich parents bribed their kids’ way into elite universities.

An amended complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of four students, three parents and others like them allege that the scheme denied them and others a fair chance to attend exclusive universities of their choice.

“Each of these students had a right to know that their application was going to be part of a review process corrupted by rampant fraud and back- door bribery,” the complaint said.

Another lawsuit was filed Wednesday in San Francisco County Superior Court on behalf of Joshua Toy, his mother, Jennifer Kay Toy, and others like them “whose rights to a fair chance at entrance to college was stolen” by those charged in the scheme.

“Joshua applied to some of the colleges where the cheating took place and did not get in,” Jennifer Kay Toy, a former Oakland school teacher, said in her lawsuit, noting her son had a 4.2 grade point average.

“I’m now outraged and hurt because I feel that my son, my only child, was denied access to a college not because he failed to work and study hard enough but because wealthy individuals felt that it was OK to lie, cheat, steal and bribe their children’s way into a good college,” Toy said in the complaint.

The Toys’ lawsuit names parents charged in connection with the alleged scheme and estimates “more than 1 million” people were af fected by it. It seeks $ 500 billion for alleged emotional distress, civil conspiracy and fraud.

The scandal was revealed Tuesday in a series of federal charges cen- tered around a California man, William “Rick” Singer. He has pleaded guilty to charges of setting up a sham charity that funneled bribes to university coaches and standardized test cheaters on behalf of his rich clients.

Authorities allege the parents paid Singer, who then either hired fixers to inf late their kids scores on standardized tests or bribed coaches to list their unathletic kids as sports team recruits in exchange for donations.

Dozens of wealthy parents tied to the Bay Area, Hollywood and Wall Street were charged with spending tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in alleged bribes to secure admission for their teen children, often apparently without their knowledge.

The federal class-action lawsuit names Singer and his sham charity, known as The Key, as well as eight top universities caught up in the caper — Stanford, Yale, USC, Georgetown University, UCLA, the University of San Diego, the University of Texas at Austin and Wake Forest University.

“We believe the lawsuit filed by the students against Stanford is without merit. We take the issues raised through the events of this week very seriously. While we continue to closely examine our policies and processes to see if improvements should be made, we stand behind the integrity of our admissions process,” said E. J. Miranda, Stanford’s senior director of media relations, in a statement.

The federal class action originally listed two Stanford students, Kalea Woods and Erica Olsen, as lead plaintiffs. Thursday, their lawyer, John F. Medler, Jr. of Irvine, amended it to drop Olsen.

The new complaint adds Lauren Fidelak, a Tulane University student, and her mother, Keri Fidelak; Tyler Bendis, a community college student, and his mother, Julia Bendis; and Nicholas James Johnson, a Rutgers University student, and his father, James Johnson.

According to the complaint, Lauren Fidelak was hospitalized in Boston from an emotional breakdown after USC and UCLA re- jected her application despite her 4.0 GPA and ACT score of 34.

The complaint said Tyler Bendis ended up at a community college after Stanford, UCLA and USD rejected him despite a 4.0 GPA, good test scores and an impressive high school athletic record as a pole vaulter on the school track and field team.

Woods, the complaint said, also had stellar test scores — 32 on the ACT and 2100 on the SAT — and unspecified athletic skills, but was rejected by USC.

The complaint said Nicholas James Johnson had an SAT score of 1500 out of 1600 and a 4.65 GPA thanks to advance placement classes, was a high school varsity hockey player and math team star, but was rejected by Stanford and the University of Texas-Austin.

The federal complaint said the class of students who could potentially benefit from a favorable judgment in the lawsuit includes students who paid an admission application fee to one or more of the named universities and were rejected between 2012 and 2018.

“It stands to reason that the number of class members is at least in the thousands,” the lawsuit said.

It said that in 2017, Stanford University received 38,828 applications and only accepted 2,210 students.

“That means for that one university, and that one year alone, there will be over 36,000 class members,” the suit said.

The federal complaint argues that “at a minimum,” those students are owed refunds for their application fees.

The federal class action accuses Singer and his organization of a racketeering conspiracy, and alleges he and the universities committed consumer fraud. It also accuses the universities of unfair competition and negligence for their employees’ alleged participation in the scheme.

The Toys and their lawyer, Daniel King of Los Angeles, were not immediately available.