Update 3/12/2019 2:54PM EST: It was also disclosed that Willkie Farr & Gallagher Co-Chairman Gordon R. Caplan has been charged. Caplan, described in the complaint as “an attorney and the co-chairman of an international law firm based in New York”, is reportedly said to have donated $75,000 to the brokering entity in question in order to have SAT test administrators correct his daughter’s answers after she finished it.
Update 3/12/2019 1:46PM EST: The complaint alleges that Ex-Pimco CEO Hodge “agreed to use bribery to facilitate the admission of two of his children to USC as purported athletic recruits” and, according to Bloomberg, he “sought to enlist the support of a cooperating witness to help a third child gain college admission”. Hodge declined to comment to Bloomberg when reached on his mobile phone, reportedly only saying, “I can’t talk right now.”
Update 3/12/2019 1:14PM EST: Ex-Pimco CEO Douglas Hodge was also named among those charged in the scheme. Hercules Capital also fell in intraday trading when it was revealed that its CEO and largest holder Manuel Henriquez was named in the DOJ affidavit.
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Federal prosecutors announced that they were charging dozens of people, including famous actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, in an alleged scheme to help students get admitted to colleges under false pretenses on Tuesday. They are being charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud. 38 people have reportedly been arrested thus far.
Prosecutors are alleging that the individuals charged tried to bribe college entrance exam officials in order to cheat on admissions tests and that some conspired to bribe coaches and administrators to label their children as “recruited athletes”. Athletes can sometimes get preferential treatment.
Among the colleges involved were Georgetown University, Yale University, Stanford University and University of California Los Angeles, according to a WSJ writeup. Charitable organizations were used as fronts for the bribery payments, according to authorities. A Newport Beach college counseling business, the Edge College & Career Network LLC, was named as the main facilitator of the bribes.
More than $6 million in bribes were paid, according to The Daily Mail, who also reported that “[Lori] Loughlin and her husband ‘agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team'”. Loughlin’s husband Mossimo Giannulli has also been charged. It was also reported that Huffman paid a $15,000 charitable contribution. Her and her husband William H. Macy had planned to do the same for a younger daughter of theirs later this month, according to reports.
It was alleged that Huffman’s daughter was able to cheat on her SATs as a result of the payments. According to the Daily Mail:
Huffman had the site where he daughter took the SATs moved from her own high school to a test center West Hollywood.
Her test was then administered by a proctor who had flown in from Tampa and told investigators that he ‘facilitated cheating, either by correcting the student’s answers after the test or by actively assisting the student during the exam.’
In this case, Huffman daughter scored a 1420, which was a 400 point improvement from her PSAT results just one year prior.
Soon after the proctor was paid $40,000 by the same organization that Huffman would later give a $15,000 donation according to the documents.
The document by authorities filed on Tuesday read:
‘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.’
Boston authorities called the bust “the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.”
Boston authorities announce charges in what they call "the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice."
More on @business 👉 https://t.co/fZLKQ5mc6G pic.twitter.com/AeVJ6JNlWu
— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) March 12, 2019
The authorities continued, stating that the group involved included “CEOs…successful securities and real estate investors, 2 well-known actresses, a famous fashion designer and a co-chairman of a global law firm”.
The head soccer coach at Yale allegedly accepted $400k for accepting a recruit who didn't even play soccer.
Wow.
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) March 12, 2019
i paid $75k in bribes to get my shit-for-brains son Jayden into DeVry
— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) March 12, 2019
I guess I should start saving now for my kids’ college bribe fund.
— Sara Pekow (@sarapekow) March 12, 2019
Bill McGlashan, the millionaire investor and CAA board member who founded The Rise Fund alongside Bono is also reported to be included among the names of those charged. We can’t wait to see what other names wind up being disclosed as part of the alleged scheme.
via zerohedge
Disgraceful is putting it mildly. Hopefully the fence will take it one step further and investigate the politicians in the same way. No one is naïve to believe that the politicians don’t do the same thing for their children.
Now let’s look at the crooked politicians who lie, cheat and take bribes from lobbyists to make our lives miserable.
i agree, they can’t be satisfied with their pay check ( 3,346 ) dollars a week, they get greedy and take or steal anything they can get their hands on.
You got that right JS. As privileged as our so-called elected representatives feel that they are, you can bet those little acorns that live in the same house as they do didn’t fall far from the parental Oak. Right now they’re only saying there are about 50 people involved but this has been going on since 2011 and you can bet the number far far exceeds that 50. I’ll just be real curious as to who the remainder are?
So, what’s the current value of a diploma from these liberal education institutions.
Not worth the paper they are printed on?
More of the current insanity wave. How many of the politicians that are having so much difficulty accepting the 2016 elections went to these ‘schools’. Schooled in the art of pay for play?
Cancel ANY and ALL Degrees that were issued to any of them FLAKES.
Now we know how Chelsea Clinton got her degree..old Bill bought it for her while she and Hillary ate ice cream!
Well, we KNOW Bill didn’t pimp Hillary out as a bribe.
It is so sad when people with money can bribe their kids into colleges and universities while there are hundreds of kids out there who, though far more qualified, cannot afford to go to college and yet do not qualify for the scholarships available to the poorer students. Something is very wrong abut this whole thing. First, NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO GO TO COLLEGE. Unfortunately, our concept of being a college graduate is warped. Specializing trade schools provide more meaningful training, in many ways, and without the cost of 4 years in one of our nations training grounds for Socialist manipulations of young minds.
I like the way you said that Pappy R. The liberal arts education institutions have been prostituting over the past roughly 50 years. Instead of educating students for betterment of themselves for useful functioning in life they have been indoctrinating them with socialist ideas being cultivated by pot and other drug heads of the 1970s.
I sure don’t want my child to attend any of those liberal colleges; how can good actresses want this for their child? It’s not like they’re getting educated…look at AOC and a few other politicians who graduated from there. Perhaps they could use the money to hire non-liberal teachers.
We need dumb nuts in colleges so left wing Marxist professors have someone to give the A’s to. Why not take money from these rich actresses to remodel college buildings and build newly named restrooms for all the newly discovered sexes we overlooked?
When I took a test like this, in the 1960’s, no one really studied for it, at least no one I knew. I got a really good score without any problem but I was always a good test taker. I met a lot of people in college that made you wonder how accurate these tests were. Maybe the bribes and payoffs go back over 50 years and we are just now noticing.
Watch “WatTer’s World” and shows of that nature, and you see what they get for their money!!! A college education used to be something envied by a lot of us, but not any more. They have ruined colleges with liberal teachings instead of what they were supposed to be teaching. It’s a sad state of affairs.
It would be interesting to report which political party these people support?
Add to this a no pass fail grades & all graduate, you get an AOC.
“No dummy left behind” WJH. And today we are surprised at the number of gross English grammar errors we see on the internet supposedly posted by graduates of journalism schools. Lack of education can easily let one take the socialism bait “hook, line and sinker”.
So does that hint why many of today’s “journalists” (?) support the anti-free enterprise concept?
Oh, the tangled Web they weave. . .Looks like there’s more than one swamp!
NOPE! It just all part of the same HUGE swamp!
This has been ongoing for at least 50 years. Before there were Pell Grants and FAFSA, in 1965 a rich man went to college, a poor man got an all expense paid trip to Viet Nam to fuel the Democrat initiated “meat grinder.” The left and media has turned a blind eye to this for years. It took an honest administration to investigate this, and I hope the investigation is expanded to include politicians, media personalities and their entitled offspring.
Hank Hodgkins - You are absolutely correct. Can you image how great this country would be if we still had all of those good young conservative men instead of the leftist, draft-dodging morons that lived and raised snowflakes? The elitist sanctioned wars have done nothing but remove the healthiest and brightest from the gene pool and left us with an overage of brainless jackasses.
This scandal is just what AOC and Bernie need to build their socialist society! The heresy of the Hollywood bunch never ends. They use the media to condemn everyone else. When was the last time these “swells” built homes in Beverley Hills or Bell Aire for the illegal or Sanctuary City aliens? Why not just declare these 2 communities as Sanctuary Cities and remove all their privacy walls so these poor and sick children of the illegals can romp freely on their lawns? Then we can let them pontificate all they want during their lawn parties for illegals.
Stuff like this has been going on for years. Why do you think trump does not want his grades released
Steven, it is Obama who doesn’t want his grades and his college records released.
Thank you Deed. Steven P. Quaid isn’t up on recent history. You are correct. Obama does not want in publicly known that he is a citizen of Kenya, not of the USA. Had the election folks been paying attention they would have qualified him by requiring him to show proof of citizenship before his name was put on ballots. As a result the nation was hoodwinked royally-for eight years. His school records at Columbia University in New York City show that he was a FOREIGN STUDENT in attendance. The Congress should order those records opened. Or, if Congress is too wimpish then file with the US Supreme Court to order the records opened for investigation. Until an answer is given Barak Hussein Obama is an imposter who was born in Kenya on the continent of Africa.
All that money just to have your kid brainwashed to become puppets for the left agenda..and they call us, the conservatives, the fools? THESE KIDS ARE LITERALLY TAUGHT TO NOT THINK FOR THEMSELVES….NO CRITICAL THINKING ALLOWED….
Hope they investigate all the athletic scholars playing basketball,football etc. I suspect a few of these scholar athletes may have bypassed the academic rigors that all others were required to pass. When I hear these athletes interviewed I am always impressed by their apparent high literacy acumen and eloquence of the spoken word they often exhibit not to mention their depth of intellectual prowess they must have mastered to merit their athletic academia scholarships to some of the most prestigious schools . I am always amazed
i agree, they can’t be satisfied with their pay check ( 3,346 ) dollars a week, they get greedy and take or steal anything they can get their hands on.
So glad my two sons decided that college wasn’t for them. Instead, they choose to serve. One is Navy, the other a Marine.
I agree. One massive, leftist swamp.
You got that right JS. As privileged as our so-called elected representatives feel that they are, you can bet those little acorns that live in the same house as they do didn’t fall far from the parental Oak. Right now they’re only saying there are about 50 people involved but this has been going on since 2011 and you can bet the number far far exceeds that 50. I’ll just be real curious as to who the remainder are?
A total non-issue.
The education given today consists of:
finding safe spaces
being able to identify microaggressions
Being able to discuss white privilege
going to the bathroom with someone of the opposite sex
Who cares who gets into Harvard or Yale?
Throw the book at them, prison for all involved.
They can charge these people but not those involved with the IT scandal or Bengazi not to mention the email server farse…
While I agree that a college education isn’t worth what it used to be and that the garbage being indoctrinated into students is socialist communist crap AND a technical school curriculum offers very good training for a lucrative and admirable career…
It also occurred to me, what is the difference between what happened here and students being admitted to a college/university based on their minority status or the color of their skin? Certainly not based on their educational merit while bumping out white students who have proven themselves through educational success in high school. Where is the outrage for that?