A Chinese family allegedly paid a whopping $6.5 million to crooked college prep adviser William “Rick” Singer in the nationwide admissions scandal — but still haven’t been charged in the case, according to a new report.
Prosecutors mentioned the eye-popping figure last month when announcing they’d busted dozens of rich American parents for allegedly paying Singer to bribe their kids’ way into top colleges — but none of those families were accused of paying anywhere near that much.
The Wall Street Journal on Friday revealed that the deep-pocketed family in question is from China, and have not been charged.
The family wasn’t identified in the report, but the paper does reveal the name of an ousted Yale student in another family, which allegedly paid Singer $1.2 million to secure her admission to the Ivy as a bogus soccer recruit.
The student — who has been identified in court documents as “Yale Applicant 1” — is 21-year-old Sherry Guo, whose family is also from China and also have not yet faced any charges.
Guo moved from China to the US as a teen to attend high school in California, and hoped to attend Columbia University or Oxford University, her attorney, James Spertus, told the Journal.
But Singer told her would be going to Yale instead — which she didn’t find weird because she was “so unfamiliar with how people apply to schools in the U.S.,” Spertus claimed.
“Rick Singer’s instructions to her didn’t seem as out of place as they would to a student who grew up in the United States and has more of an expectation of free choice,” he told the paper.
Singer submitted a falsified athletic profile to the head coach of Yale’s women’s soccer team, Rudy Meredith, claiming Guo was the “co-captain of a prominent soccer team in southern California,” court documents allege.
Meredith then designated her as a recruit, even though he knew she didn’t play soccer — and when she was accepted to the school, Singer sent him a check for $400,000, prosecutors claim.
Yale last month announced it had booted “Yale Applicant 1.”
Both Meredith and Singer have pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme.