A prominent senior athletic official and several coaches at USC, as well as another coach at UCLA, are among several charged in a sweeping admissions bribery case unsealed in federal court Tuesday in which the coaches accepted bribes in exchange for admitting students as athletes, regardless of their ability.
Charges have been brought against USC senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel, men’s and women’s water polo coach Jovan Vavic and former women’s soccer head coach Ali Khosroshahin and former assistant coach Laura Janke. UCLA men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo has also been indicted.
Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were charged along with nearly 50 other people Tuesday in a scheme in which wealthy parents bribed college coaches and insiders at testing centers to help get their children into some of the most elite schools in the country, prosecutors said.
Other schools wrapped up in the controversy include Yale, Stanford, Wake Forest, Georgetown. The bribes, which occurred from 2011 through February 2019, ranged from a few thousand dollars to up to $6 million, according to officials. The charging documents, unsealed in Boston federal court, are more than 200 pages long.
“These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in announcing the $25 million federal bribery case. Lelling said it was the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
Lelling said Tuesday at a news conference that the colleges themselves are not targets of the continuing investigation.
Among the parents charged were Gordon Caplan of Greenwich, Connecticut, a co-chairman of an international law firm based in New York; Jane Buckingham, CEO of a boutique marketing company in Los Angeles; Gregory Abbott of New York, founder and chairman of a packaging company; and Manuel Henriquez, CEO of a finance company based in Palo Alto.
The bribes allegedly came through an admissions consulting company in Newport Beach. Authorities said parents paid William “Rick” Singer, the founder of the Edge College & Career Network, approximately $25 million to get their children into college.
Singer, of Newport Beach, pleaded guilty in Boston federal court Tuesday to charges including racketeering conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
Attorney Donald Heller told reporters that William “Rick” Singer is “remorseful and contrite and wants to move on with his life.” Heller says Singer is “relieved that this part is over.”
The criminal complaint paints an ugly picture of high-powered individuals committing crimes to get their children into selective schools. Among those charged are Huffman, best known for her role on the television show “Desperate Housewives,” and Loughlin, who appeared on “Full House,” according to court documents.
Both were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.
The FBI said 13 defendants in a college admissions bribery scam have been taken into custody in the Los Angeles area, including Huffman.
Court documents said Huffman paid $15,000 that she disguised as a charitable donation so that her daughter could take part in the college entrance-exam cheating scam.
Court papers said a cooperating witness met with Huffman and her husband, actor William H. Macy, at their Los Angeles home and explained to them that he “controlled” a testing center and could have somebody secretly change her daughter’s answers. The person told investigators that the couple agreed to the plan.
Macy was not charged; authorities did not say why.
A judge released Huffman on $250,000 bond and ordered the actress to restrict her travel to the continental United States.
Macy told Parade magazine in January that the college application process for their daughter was stressful. The couple’s daughter, Sofia, is an aspiring actress who attends Los Angeles High School of the Arts.
Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, were accused of paying $500,000 in bribes so their two daughters would be designated as recruits for the USC crew team — even though they were not part of the team. That helped the pair get into USC, according to the complaint.
Their 19-year-old daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli, who has a popular YouTube channel, attends USC.
Loughlin is among those charged but was not taken into custody Tuesday morning. Giannulli was arrested at their home.
Messages seeking comment from Huffman’s representative were not immediately returned. A spokeswoman for Loughlin had no comment.
Authorities said the crimes date back to 2011, and the defendants used “bribery and other forms of fraud to facilitate their children’s admission” to numerous college and universities,” including Georgetown, Yale, Stanford, the University of Texas, USC and UCLA, among others. One of the cooperating witnesses, according to the court documents, is a former head coach of Yale’s women’s soccer team, who pleaded guilty in the case nearly a year ago and has since been helping FBI agents gather evidence.
The investigation began when authorities received a tip about the admissions scheme from someone they were interviewing in a separate case, Lelling said. He did not elaborate.
Some of the 32 defendants are accused of bribing college entrance exam administrators to facilitate cheating on tests — by having a smarter student take the test, or providing students with answers to exams or correcting their answers after they had completed the exams, according to the criminal complaint filed in federal court.
Prosecutors said parents were also instructed to claim their children had learning disabilities so that they could take the ACT or SAT by themselves, with extended time. That made it easier to pull off the tampering, prosecutors said.
Caplan was accused of paying $75,000 to get a test supervisor to correct the answers on her daughter’s ACT exam after she took it. In a conversation last June with a cooperating witness, he was told his daughter needed “to be stupid” when a psychologist evaluated her for learning disabilities in order to get more time for the exam, according to court papers.
“It’s the home run of home runs,” the witness said.
“And it works?” Caplan asked.
“Every time,” the witness responded, prompting laughter from both.
At one point, Caplan asked if schools were “concerned with this.”
“Schools don’t know. Schools don’t know,” the witness said.
Others allegedly bribed university athletic coaches and administrators to designate applicants as “purported athletic recruits — regardless of their athletic abilities, and in some cases, even though they did not play the sport they were purportedly recruited to play — thereby facilitating their admission to universities in place of more qualified applicants,” the complaint charges.
Reportedly in most cases, the students did not know their admission was contingent on a bribe.
“For every student admitted through fraud, an honest and genuinely talented student was rejected,” Lelling said.
Prosecutors allege fake athletic profiles were made to make students look like strong high school athletes when they actually weren’t.
Authorities say the consulting company also bribed administrators of college entrance exams to allow a Florida man to take the tests on behalf of students or replace their answers with his.
John Vandemoer, the former head sailing coach at Stanford, was also expected to plead guilty Tuesday.
Colleges moved quickly to discipline the coaches accused of involvement. Stanford fired Vandemoer, the former head sailing coach who was expected to plead guilty Tuesday, while USC fired associate athletic director Heinel and legendary water polo coach Vavic.
UCLA said its soccer coach, Salcedo, has been placed on leave pending a review and will have no involvement with the team.
UCLA said in a statement Tuesday it’s a “potential victim of a fraudulent scheme” but that it’s not aware of any student-athletes who are under suspicion.
Court documents said Salcedo, who was the head coach for the men’s team, helped get two applicants who did not play competitive soccer into UCLA in exchange for $100,000 in 2016 and 2018.
Wake Forest University says it has suspended its head volleyball coach, Bill Ferguson, but declined further comment.
In a statement, USC officials said the school is cooperating with the federal investigation and has launched its own review.
“We understand that the government believes that illegal activity was carried out by individuals who went to great lengths to conceal their actions from the university,” the statement says. “USC is conducting an internal investigation and will take employment actions as appropriate. USC is in the process of identifying any funds received by the university in connection with this alleged scheme. Additionally, the university is reviewing its admissions processes broadly to ensure that such actions do not occur going forward.”
The NCAA says it will look into claims made against college coaches and administrators in the admissions bribery scandal.
In a statement, the NCAA says the “charges brought forth today are troubling and should be a concern for all of higher education.”
The Washington Post and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
