More wealthy parents could be swept up in widening college scandal
Los Angeles Times
The college cheating scandal has rocked elite sections of California and beyond, with Silicon Valley business leaders, CEOs, Hollywood actresses, a best-selling self-help author and a famous fashion designer swept up in it.
There are signs that more charges could be coming.
Federal authorities have said the investigation is continuing, but have not provided details. They did say the colleges involved are not criminal targets.
Subpoenas: One sign of where the investigation is going comes from several elite Southern California prep schools, which have been subpoenaed by prosecutors seeking information about some of the students involved in the fraud case. Although the prep schools are not targets of the
investigation, prosecutors want to know whether the parents and others accused in the case sought or received help from the schools, sources told The Los Angeles Times.
Far-reaching scheme: It remains unclear how many parents took part in the college admissions scam.
The scheme, which began in 2011, centered on a Newport Beach, Calif., college placement firm run by Rick Singer. Wealthy parents paid Mr. Singer to help their children cheat on college entrance exams and to falsify athletic records of students to enable them to secure admission to elite schools, including UCLA, the University of Southern California, and Stanford, Yale and Georgetown universities, according to court records.
Prosecutors allege that Mr. Singer instructed parents to donate money to a fake charity he established as part of the scheme. Most of the parents paid at least $200,000, but some spent up to $6.5 million to guarantee their children admission to top universities, authorities said. The parents were then able to deduct the donation from their income taxes, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
The scheme was fairly simple, prosecutors said: Mr. Singer instructed parents to seek extended time for their children on ACT and SAT exams. In at least one instance, a student claimed to have a learning disability to obtain medical documentation required by the College Board and ACT Inc. to grant additional time to take the tests, according to court documents.
Large clientele: Court documents said Mr. Singer had more than 700 clients. But it is believed that a much smaller group of very wealthy parents took part in the scheme. Some parents interviewed by The Times said they used Mr. Singer’s firm for typical college placement services and had nothing to do with bribes.
More investigations: In addition to federal prosecutors, several universities and at least one Los Angeles prep school have opened their own investigations into what happened.
USC interim President Wanda Austin, for example, wrote in a letter Thursday that the university had opened an investigation, which would include looking for suspect donations and determining what to do about students and applicants involved in the scam.
Harvard-Westlake School, an elite prep school in the Studio Cit neighborhood of Los Angeles, said it has also begun an internal review.
Mr. Singer ran a tight operation. For years, he and his team churned out the bribes and lies at the heart of his scam without getting caught. But there were close calls.
Well before federal investigators caught a break last year that led them to the Newport Beach, Calif., businessman and what prosecutors allege was his network of wealthy parents and corrupt college officials, a few people along the way caught glimpses of the deception Mr. Singer was peddling and raised red flags.
Questions from a counselor at a Los Angeles private school about a student who had been admitted to the University of Southern California as a water polo player despite not playing the sport prompted Mr. Singer and a USC administrator to shut down the inquiry with more lies.
These and other nearmisses that Mr. Singer dodged show not only the brazenness of his operation, but also the fine line he walked exploiting vulnerabilities in the opaque college admissions process and parents’ desperation to see their kids admitted to toptier universities.
Mr. Singer largely was able to walk that line without worry, spinning subpar students into desirable applicants through fabrications that could have been exposed if anyone bothered to check their resumes.
“This process was set up to be exploited by unscrupulous people,” said Rick Eckstein, a sociology professor at Villanova University and an expert on the highschool-to-college athletic pipeline.
When FBI agents did catch up with him in September, Mr. Singer, 58, flipped quickly, agreeing to help ensnare parents and the coaches at USC, Stanford, UCLA and elsewhere who allegedly participated in his scam. Prosecutors announced charges against 50 people and indicated that more could be coming.