San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
New details on role in admissions
Prosecutors are recommending a 13-month prison sentence for Stanford’s disgraced former sailing coach, while also revealing new details about his role in the huge college admissions bribery scandal in a sentencing memorandum filed in Boston federal court.
John Vandemoer, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering and is expected to be sentenced this week, created a bogus sailing resume for one recruit from Las Vegas, lying to his employer, Stanford, that the girl commuted nearly 600 miles round-trip from her Nevada home to Newport Beach to sail on a team. The girl had limited sailing experience.
Vandemoer has admitted to accepting $610,000 in bribes as part of the scheme, although prosecutors have recommended a lower sentence because the former coach did not personally pocket the funds, but rather used it for the team. Still, prosecutors hoped to set an example that such behavior on a college campus is wrong.
“His actions not only
deceived and defrauded the university that employed him, but also validated a national cynicism over college admissions by helping wealthy and unscrupulous applicants enjoy an unjust advantage over those who either lack deep pockets or are simply unwilling to cheat to get ahead,” lead prosecutor Eric Rosen wrote in the court record.
Vandemoer’s attorney also submitted a sentencing memo Friday that asked for probation, citing excerpts from more than two dozen letters of support from friends, family and colleagues in the sailing community. The former sailing coach deposited all three checks he received from Singer into two accounts, one for sailing uniforms and equipment, and another for the salary of an assistant coach, his attorney wrote.
“Mr. Vandemoer’s intent, while misguided, was to help the sailing program he loved,” lawyer Robert Fisher wrote.
More than 50 people, including many Bay Area parents, have been implicated in the scandal which involved wealthy parents paying large sums of money to bribe college coaches and officials to accept unqualified students as athletic recruits, as well as test proctors to cheat on their children’s entrance exams. The ringleader, William “Rick” Singer, created bogus charities that would funnel the parents’ money to other members of the scam.
Vandemoer is expected to be the first defendant sentenced.
Vandemoer was introduced to Singer in fall 2016 when the coach was asked to designate a student from China as a sailing recruit. In exchange, the student’s family would “endow” sailing coach salaries. Singer created a fake sailing profile for the girl, but it didn’t pan out because it was too late in the recruiting season. Instead, the girl was later admitted to Stanford through the regular application process.
Prosecutors noted that after the girl’s admission, the parents of the girl made a $6.5 million payment to Singer’s organization. Stanford has since said it rescinded the student’s admission.
Singer paid Vandemoer $500,000 for his efforts. In fall 2017, a year later, Singer told Vandemoer he had another student and there would be the “same outcome for both sides” if Vandemoer designated this student as a sailing recruit. Vandemoer received $110,000 for doing that, but the student enrolled at Brown University instead.
After that fell through, Vandemoer designated a third applicant as a sailing recruit, lying on an internal “ranking and justification” form. Vandermoer wrote that the girl lived in Las Vegas, but “had solid experience at Newport Beach Yacht club and training at the U.S. sailing center in Long Beach.”
“She is an athlete from other sports who converted late to sailing,” Vandemoer wrote on the university paperwork. “She has the potential to be a really athletic crew for us. She lives in Las Vegas during the year and commutes to Newport Beach to sail.”
Again, despite being approved for a recruiting spot, the girl chose to attend Vanderbilt University.
By October 2018, Singer had begun working with federal investigators and placed recorded calls to Vandemoer in which the sailing coach admitted to accepting the bribes. He also helped Singer fabricate another bogus sailing recruit’s credentials who was applying to another university by recommending regattas to use to boost that student’s resume.
On Feb. 5, investigators interviewed Vandemoer at his home and while he initially denied the scam, he eventually confessed to it and “that he knew that what he was doing was wrong.”
Although the government agreed to a possible 33- to 41-month sentence in the plea deal, prosecutors said they were asking for the lesser sentence because the “defendant has otherwise led a lawabiding life, did not directly profit financially from his crimes, promptly accepted responsibility for them, appears genuinely remorseful, and is unlikely to reoffend.”
Prosecutors, however, said that by selling the recruitment slots it benefited Vandemoer in other ways.
“The parents who conspired to bribe Vandemoer and other coaches did so precisely to gain a lifelong commercial advantage for their children in the form of a degree from an elite university,” Rosen wrote. “And the defendant, too, benefited, insofar as the bribes were paid, at his direction, to a fund he controlled, which benefited the team he managed, and thus enhanced his standing within the university and his career — all of which he has admitted.”
Prosecutors said they expect Stanford to submit a victim impact letter as well, and Rosen detailed how the college suffered from the scam, including in a hit to its reputation.
The letters of support for Vandemoer spoke of a well-meaning coach who, since his arrest and termination, was evicted with his wife and two kids from student housing and has entered therapy. “I know he made a mistake. I know it is extremely costly to his livelihood, to our family,” his wife, Molly Vandemoer, an Olympic sailor, wrote the judge. “But I know he will never do something like this again. I know he will continue to be an upstanding member of society, and I know he will always be the loving, patient, and hard working man I met 13 years ago.”