Actors, designers, distillery owners: here are some of those charged in the college admissions scheme



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It's a story taken from a Hollywood script and, rightly, that includes actors.

Among the 50 defendants indicted on Tuesday for a large-scale conspiracy are the man who dragged former Barack Obama's family members into tennis; an investor who has created a social impact fund with Bono; a bourbon distillery owner married to a former football player; and a former Harvard tennis player.

The rich parents accused of conspiring to school their children in elite schools accounted for more than 1%. They had contacts at the highest level and, when the ordinary profits of extreme wealth failed, prosecutors told their children that they would become a material of first choice. They turned to William "Rick" Singer, the man who chaired a ploy to facilitate fraud. college admissions tests and corruption coaches to help children of wealthy parents to enter prestigious universities.

Here are some of the people charged on Tuesday.

Gordon Ernst

After being hired by the University of Rhode Island as head coach of the Women's Tennis Team in 2018, Ernst was featured on the University's website as a member of the Nova Scotia Tennis Hall of Fame. England.

Authorities said he had won $ 950,000 to promote several students as potential tennis rookies for Georgetown, while they were not tennis players of this caliber.

Linda Acciardo, a spokeswoman for the University of Rhode Island, said in a statement that the school had put Ernst on administrative leave Tuesday after learning the charges against him. He has not been involved in recruiting current players, she wrote, nor in signing recruits.

Ernst did not respond to messages requesting comments on Tuesday.

Rollice Ernst, his mother, said his son had loved coaching Michelle and Malia Obama. (A spokesperson for Michelle Obama did not respond to a message asking for comments.)

Gordon Ernst played hockey and tennis at Brown University, said Rollice Ernst, a 1990 graduate. after one semester in Canada. The family was not very worried about Brown's acceptance of his brother because Rollice Ernst's father had graduated in 1949, he had raised a lot of money and was stimulating the university. She hoped that their academic and athletic abilities would allow them.

She was proud of him, she said, "I still am."

Rollice Ernst was reading about the case on Tuesday, she said. "These colleges do what they want. They have so many niches that they give coaches a number of niches that they give coaches that they can recruit. . . . As soon as you put money in the equation, they get angry, apparently. "

When he left Georgetown, his lawyer assured him that he was not doing anything illegal or immoral, said Rollice Ernst. "We'll see, you never know how that will happen.

Marci Palatella

When Palatella contacted Singer to ask her for help in bringing her son to the University of Southern California, she first asked if she could just write a check for a generous donation, according to the criminal complaint. Singer provided him with a price list, but added that this would not be enough: the best way to guarantee the boy's admission was to bribe a coach so his son could pretend to be a football rookie. It would not have been so far-fetched: Palatella's husband, Lou Palatella, is a former 49er from San Francisco. He is not charged in the case.

Later, Palatella reportedly told Singer that she and her husband "were laughing every day" about the scheme to bring their son to the USC.

Palatella, of Hillsborough, Calif., Owns an artisanal distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky, outside of Louisville. Palatella could not be reached for comment.

William McGlashan Jr.

McGlashan may have been unknown to the general public, but the people he worked with – Bono, Laurene Powell Jobs and Netflix founder Reed Hastings – are well known. The Silicon Valley investor has worked with the trio and several others to create the Rise Fund, a social impact fund that has invested in education technologies and personal finance. He is also a senior executive of a global private equity firm and serves on the boards of several recognized brands, including e.l.f. cosmetics and Fender, the maker of guitars, according to his biography on the website of Endeavor Global, a non-profit association, where he sits on the board of directors.

According to the police, McGlashan allegedly conspired with Singer to get his son to USC by applying for a job as a football rookie – even though McGlashan's son was attending a high school without a football team. According to the criminal complaint, Singer told McGlashan that he would introduce McGlashan's son as a kicker, as kickers are sometimes recruited into special camps outside their schools.

McGlashan apparently laughed, according to the criminal complaint, which included part of their wiretap conversation.

"He has really strong legs," McGlashan said.

McGlashan himself is the product of elite schools, having obtained his BA from Yale University and his MBA from Stanford. McGlashan could not be reached for comment.

Mark Riddell

When the complaint was filed, Singer asked Riddell to prepare the best results at the college entrance exams of the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. Riddell, a Harvard graduate in 2004, will pass tests for students with aspirations, but not scores, to be admitted to the best schools. Riddell has always scored high.

IMG Academy is a boarding school founded by a sports marketing firm which prepares elite athletes for the best university programs or careers as professional athletes. The academy has removed Riddell's biography from his website. Before it was removed, the former university tennis player had helped "thousands of students to be admitted to the best American universities such as Stanford, Duke, Columbia, Dartmouth [and] University of Chicago. "

Neither Riddell nor IMG Academy could be contacted for comment.

Lori Loughlin

There is a reason for "Aunt Becky" to be around the world on Twitter for hours on Tuesday – Loughlin's alleged crimes could not be more opposed to Becky Katsopolis, the beneficial role that she played in the "Full House" sitcom of the 1990s on ABC, as John Stamos' wife of Uncle Jesse.

Loughlin has continued to play small roles in television series over the years. She has been a regular series of CW drama series such as "Summerland" and "90210". She found her place in Hallmark Channel's "Garage Sale Mystery" film franchise, for which she was executive producer and appeared in the holiday film "Every Christmas Has a Story" at "Northpole: Open for Christmas". She is married to designer Mossimo Giannulli, who has also been indicted since 1997.

Felicity Huffman

Oscar-nominated Huffman's lead role was in Aaron Sorkin's comedy drama "Sports Night" in the late 1990s, in which she acted as executive producer on a sports talk show. . But she only became a real family name in 2004 with a lead role in ABC's "Desperate Housewives," and her resounding success centers on suburban women with multiple secrets. Huffman was critically acclaimed for her role as Lynette, the former leader became a mother of four and won the Emmy Award for lead actress in a comedy in 2005. Around this time, her Glory was nominated for an Academy Award for "Transamerica," in which she played the role of transgender woman who discovered that she had a long-lost son. She is married since 1997 to the actor William H. Macy, who was listed as "wife" in the criminal complaint but was not charged.

Mossimo Giannulli

The fashion designer Giannulli is best known for his name. The Mossimo clothing line is well known to Target shoppers, where it has been one of the most popular exclusive brands in the store for years. (The store announced that it was separating from the brand in 2017.)Giannulli, from California, started the company as a beachwear line in 1987. He then expanded his business to the sale of casual wear and accessories, and the company has earned millions of dollars.

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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