Two plead guilty in admissions scandal
An accountant who laundered bribes and a collegiate soccer coach who pocketed them pleaded guilty in Boston on Thursday to racketeering conspiracy, acknowledging they played key roles in a scheme that defrauded some of the country’s most prestigious universities.
Steven Masera, an accountant from the Sacramento suburb of Folsom, kept the books for the Key Worldwide Foundation, a charity that claimed to help low-income children but did little more than funnel money from wealthy parents to coaches who misrepresented their children as recruited athletes, and to test proctors who let them cheat on their entrance exams.
Some parents deducted the five- and six-figure bribes from their tax bills, prosecutors alleged.
Ali Khosroshahin, who led the University of Southern California women’s soccer program from 2007 to 2013, recruited four students to his program who had never played soccer in a competitive setting, prosecutors say. In exchange, Khosroshahin took more than $200,000 in bribes from William “Rick” Singer, the admitted architect of the test-fixing and bribery scam that exploded into public view in March.
Fifty people have been charged with fraud and money laundering crimes by the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, including 33 parents from some of the country’s wealthiest enclaves and some of its most lucrative and influential industries.
Both Masera and Khosroshahin have signed cooperation agreements, promising to tell prosecutors what they know of the scam in hopes of receiving leniency when they are sentenced. Masera will be sentenced Oct. 22; Khosroshahin, Oct. 25. Should any of the 28 defendants who have maintained their innocence go to trial, Masera and Khosroshahin could be called to testify against them.
Prosecutors recommend that Masera, 69, spend about five years in prison, according to his plea agreement and federal sentencing guidelines. They recommend Khosroshahin, 46, be imprisoned for about four years and forfeit $209,000, the sum he reaped from Singer’s scheme.
In deciding the first sentence of the case earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Rya W. Zobel spared John Vandemoer prison, despite prosecutors recommending the former Stanford sailing coach be incarcerated for 13 months. That proposal was less than the range given in Vandemoer’s plea deal, but Zobel disputed the government’s sentencing calculus and went far below that recommendation.