A new twist in fraud in college athletics: the fake profile making non-athletes into athletes; Yale women's soccer coach implicated in massive college admissions fraud

NPR quotes D. Mass. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling as indicating


33 parents "paid enormous sums" to ensure their children got into schools such as Yale, sending money to a man named William Singer for faking records and obtaining false scores on important tests such as the SAT and ACT.

"Singer's clients paid him anywhere between $200,000 and $6.5 million for this service."

In most cases, he added, the parents paid between $250,000 and $450,000 per student.

"These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege," Lelling said. "They include, for example, CEOs of private and public companies, successful securities and real estate investors, two well-known actresses, a famous fashion designer, and the co-chairman of a global law firm."

(...)

Lelling cited one case in which the Yale women's soccer coach took hundreds of thousands of dollars to put a student on the team, despite knowing the student did not play the sport.



link: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/12/702539140/u-s-accuses-actresses-others-of-fraud-in-wide-college-admissions-scandal

The NPR link includes the names of the mail fraud defendants.


ABC News wrote:


"Beginning in or about 2011, and continuing through the present, the defendants -- principally individuals whose high-school age children were applying to college -- conspired with others to use bribery and other forms of fraud to facilitate their children's admission to colleges and universities in the District of Massachusetts and elsewhere, including Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California, and the University of Southern California -- Los Angeles," the indictment said.



link: https://abcnews.go.com/US/hollywood-actors-ceos-charged-nationwide-college-admissions-cheating/story?id=61627873

CNN wrote


The purpose of the alleged scam was to help student athletes get into college as recruited athletes,
regardless of their athletic ability, according to the indictment.

It alleges that a third party took the ACT and SAT college entrance exams in place of students.
The documents also allege that some defendants created fake athletic profiles for students to make them appear to be successful athletes and get them into college.

Athletic coaches from Yale, Stanford, USC, Wake Forest and Georgetown, among others, are implicated as well as parents and exam administrators, federal prosecutors said.




link: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/12/us/college-admission-cheating-scheme/index.html

The New Haven Register reported:



Another defendant named in the case was Gordon Caplan, of Greenwich, and an attorney of an international law firm in New York City.

In late 2018, Caplan participated in the college entrance exam cheating scandal by making a charitable $75,000 donation to Key Worldwide Foundation, in exchange to have the coaches obtain his daughter’s exam and correct the answers after completing it.

Singer was a resident, variously, of Sacramento and Newport Beach, Califomia, the indictment says. Singer owned the Edge College & Career Network, LLC, also known as “The Key,” a for-profit college counseling and preparation business that he founded in or about 2007 and incorporated in the State of Califonia in or about 2012.



link: https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Yale-soccer-coach-implicated-in-college-admission-13682117.php



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