Ex-Georgetown tennis coach to plead guilty
Gordon Ernst, the onetime head tennis coach at Georgetown University, is the latest “Varsity Blues” defendant to admit the match is over.
The 54-year-old from Chevy Chase, Md., and Falmouth will plead guilty to bribery and filing a false tax return, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston.
He has also agreed to forfeit nearly $3.44 million he earned from the college admissions scheme.
He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the most serious bribery charge. His plea hearing has not been set.
The feds says Ernst was bribed, in one case, to designate a parent’s daughter as a tennis recruit even though her “tennis skills were below that of a typical Georgetown tennis recruit.”
Similar charges say he solicited and received bribes from three other prospective Georgetown applicants, then failed to report a significant portion of those payments on his federal tax returns, prosecutors said a year ago.
Ernst was set to go to trial in November. The announcement of his intention to plead guilty comes as two “Varsity Blues” parents, John Wilson, 62, of Lynnfield, and Gamal Abdelaziz, 64, of Las Vegas, are on trial in the Boston federal court this week.
As the Herald also reported this week, “Full House” actress Lori Loughlin
has been granted “expedited” permission to head to Canada to possibly rekindle her career.
A federal judge in Boston has approved her request to travel out of the country — while still on probation for her “Varsity Blues” college admissions scam guilty plea — later this month or early in October.