A former USC football coach pleads guilty in a university admissions program

BOSTON – A former football coach from the University of Southern California pleaded guilty on Tuesday to accusations that she would have created fake sports profiles for children of wealthy parents as part of a corruption ploy in the universities.

Laura Janke initially pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering in March. She pleaded guilty on Tuesday after entering into a plea agreement with prosecutors.

Janke has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and may be called to testify against others. She also agreed to pay a forfeiture order of nearly $ 135,000, which prosecutors say amounts to the amount she benefited from the scheme.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that they were asking for a sentence of 27 months to 33 months in prison, although the prosecution is punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years. The 36-year-old California resident will be sentenced on 17 October. Janke went to court only to answer the judge's yes or no questions and refused by her lawyer to comment after the hearing.

The authorities claim that the former assistant coach of women 's football had accepted bribes and contributed to the creation of fake sports profiles for female candidates to enter universities as sports recruits. they did not practice.

Among them, there was one for the daughter of actress Lori Loughlin and her stylist husband, Mossimo Giannulli.

According to the authorities, Janke has created a profile describing Olivia Jade Giannulli, the youngest daughter of the couple and a YouTube star, as a competitive rower, even if she did not practice the sport. The teenager was finally admitted to the USC as a rookie of the crew.

Janke is the fourth coach to plead guilty to the biggest college admissions scheme ever pursued in the United States, which the authorities dubbed "Operation Varsity Blues".

Former Yale University women's football coach, Rudy Meredith, former Stanford coach John Vandemoer, and former coach of the University of Texas at Austin , Michael Center, have already pleaded guilty.

A total of 50 people were charged, including 33 parents, 10 college coaches and sports officials, and seven others charged with orchestrating bribes or a separate system of cheating on college entrance exams.

Most coaches face charges of conspiracy to commit racketeering, while most parents are charged with conspiracy to commit postal fraud.

On Monday, actress Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty to having paid $ 15,000 to rig her daughter's SAT score. Loughlin and Giannulli pleaded not guilty to paying $ 500,000 in bribes for their daughters to become USC.

In court Tuesday, prosecutors said Janke had accepted bribes to help at least four students to be admitted to the USC while they were working as an assistant coach.

The bribes, totaling nearly $ 350,000, were paid on private soccer camp accounts organized by Janke and former USC head coach, Ali Khosroshahin, also charged in this case, announced the prosecutors.

When she left the university in 2014, Janke continued to work on the program, helping to create many of the fake sports profiles cited in the case. These profiles were used to bring students in not only to USC, but also to Stanford and Yale.

In one case, Janke created a dummy profile for the daughter of Toby MacFarlane, a former senior executive of a title insurance company, describing her as a "US Club Soccer All American." MacFarlane's daughter graduated from USC last year without ever playing school, authorities said.

Singer paid $ 150,000 to a private football club partially controlled by Janke, officials said.

Janke also created a fake sports profile for MacFarlane's son, who described him as having more than six feet tall while he was really measuring 5 feet and 5 inches tall, authorities said. His son did not play basketball at the USC and retired from school last year, they said.