A Chinese mom has been been arrested for shelling out $400,000 in bribes to get her son into UCLA as a scholarship-winning soccer recruit — even though he never played the sport competitively, the feds said Tuesday.
Xiaoning Sui, 48, of Canada was nabbed in Spain late Monday for paying infamous college-scam fixer Rick Singer the big bucks to ensure her boy won admission to the University of California at Los Angeles in November 2018 — along with a 25 percent sports scholarship, according to a statement by US Attorney Andrew Lelling.
Sui gave Singer the dough — and photos of her son playing tennis, authorities said.
Singer, who has already pleaded guilty in the widespread scheme, passed the snapshots to a cohort, disgraced UCLA soccer academy director Laura Janke.
“This young man will be a soccer player from Vancouver for UCLA,” Singer wrote Janke, according to court papers.
Janke then created a fake soccer profile for the kid — and included in his file a photo of another young man playing soccer, authorities said.
Janke’s illicit work of fiction described Sui’s son as a “top player for two private soccer clubs in Canada,” the feds said. Janke has pleaded guilty in the college fixing scam.
Singer had originally promised Sui on Oct. 24, 2018, that she would receive a “letter of intent from the UCLA soccer coach” if she wired Singer a $100,000 down payment on his hefty fee, officials said.
“Although your son is a tennis player, because there is a place on the soccer team … it is the soccer team that takes your son,” Singer wrote the mom, according to court papers.
UCLA’s men’s soccer team is one of the best in the country. Its former coach, Jorge Salcedo, has already been accused in the fixing scheme and pleaded not guilty to charges.
The feds said Sui wired the funds to Singer two days after his request for money — and less than two weeks after that, the school admitted her son “as a recruited soccer player” and awarded him the scholarship for soccer.
A few months later, Sui allegedly wired another $300,000 to a bank account tied to Singer in Boston.
Sui faces charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest-services mail fraud and up to 20 years in prison if convicted, the feds said.
She is awaiting extradition from Spain to Boston, where Lelling is the AG.
Other parents also netted in the college scandal include TV actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin.
Huffman pleaded guilty to paying Singer $15,000 to boost her daughter’s SAT scores to get her into a good school and was sentenced last week to 14 days behind bars.
Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, have pleaded not guilty to charges they paid Singer $500,000 to get their daughters into USC as rowing recruits, when neither girl participated in the sport.