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Two SAT / ACT directors, an exam supervisor, nine elite school coaches, a university administrator and 33 parents – a total of 50 people – are accused of participating in a ploy to cheat on standardized tests and to bribe college coaches and others to admit students as athletes, regardless of their abilities, revealed prosecutors in a federal indictment. The scandal is called the biggest college swindle ever pursued.
The FBI's special agent, Joseph Bonavolonta, said some parents had spent between $ 200,000 and $ 6.5 million to guarantee the admission of their children.
A plaintiff's relatives paid $ 1.2 million to a California business owner to mistakenly call him co-captain of a reputed Californian football team, although the plaintiff did not Did not play competitive football, prosecutors said.
The average annual cost of tuition at a private four-year college is $ 29,478, according to the latest report released by the National Center for Education Statistics of the US Department of Education's US-based United.
"This case concerns the widening of the corruption of admissions to elite colleges resulting from the regular use of wealth, associated with fraud," said Andrew Lelling, the American lawyer from Massachusetts. "There can be no separate college admissions system for the rich, and I'll add that there will not be any separate criminal justice system either."
The alleged parents would have been involved: CEOs, a fashion designer, the president of an international law firm and actors such as Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, said Lelling.
He added: "For every student admitted for fraud, an honest and truly talented student was rejected."
How the money was spent
William Rick Singer, founder of a for-profit consultancy and university readiness company, known as "The Key," focuses on the essentials of the act. 39; accusation.
"OK, so who are we? What we do is help the wealthiest families in the United States to educate their children," Singer told one of the parents, according to the prosecutors.
Lelling explained the two main ways to carry out the project.
"I'll talk more broadly, there were basically two types of fraud that Singer was selling," Lelling said of charges laid from 2011 through 2019. "One was to deceive the SAT or the ACT, the other to use his relations with the coaches of Division I and his bribes to bring the children of these parents to school with false sports references. "
For example, prosecutors said that Singer and his co-conspirators had used photos of a person practicing a sport, and then put a student's face on this image via Photoshop.
Parents have paid about $ 25 million to Singer to help their children go to school, said the American lawyer.
Singer pleaded guilty on Tuesday for racketeering, money laundering conspiracy, fraud plotting in the United States and obstruction of justice, prosecutors said.
Actresses would be on a tape discussing a plan
Best known for his role on television "Desperate Housewives", Huffman is accused of paying $ 15,000 to Singer's key bane, the Key Worldwide Foundation, to facilitate cheating on his daughter at SAT, according to the complaint.
His daughter received a 1420 test, which is 400 points higher than a PSAT taken a year earlier without the same administrator, says the complaint.
Huffman also discussed the ploy during a recorded call with a witness, according to the complaint.
Huffman has been charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest service fraud, according to court documents filed Monday in a federal Massachusetts court. She was arrested without incident at home, the FBI announced.
She appeared in a federal court in Los Angeles on Tuesday, where a judge set a bond of $ 250,000 and federal agents took her passport.
His next court date is March 29 in Boston.
Loughlin, who played Aunt Becky on "Full House", faces the same crime charge. Her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, has also been charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and fraud relating to honest services.
Giannulli and Loughlin reportedly agreed to pay bribes in the total amount of $ 500,000 in exchange for the designation of their two daughters as recruits to the USC team, although they did Did not participate in the crew, the complaint said.
The money was donated to Singer's charitable counterfeit and, in a recorded appeal, Singer made it clear that this money was intended to allow their daughters to be part of the USC team. , according to the complaint.
Giannulli appeared in court on Tuesday, where a magistrate set a $ 1 million bail and ordered him to return his passport.
Although she was not present in court, Loughlin's attorneys and lawyers agreed to similar terms, as well as permission to travel to Vancouver for work.
CNN contacted Iconix Brand Group, owner of the fashion company Giannulli, Mossimo.
CNN is also seeking input from actress representatives.
The colleges involved
Coaches from Yale, Stanford, the University of Southern California, Wake Forest and Georgetown, among others, are involved in the case. The large-scale case involved arrests in six states of the country.
"The Justice Department believes that Yale was a victim of a crime committed by a former coach who no longer works at the university," said the university in a statement sent to the university. ;school. "The corrupt behavior alleged by the Department of Justice is an affront to the deeply entrenched values of our university, namely inclusion and fairness."
Georgetown told students that the coach stopped in their case, "has not coached our tennis team since December 2017, by which time it was put off after the Office of Undergraduate Admissions found irregularities in its recruitment practices and that the University opened an internal investigation. "
The University of Southern California announced that it was reviewing its application process.
What happens to students?
It is no coincidence that no student was charged on Tuesday, US Attorney Lelling said. The parents and other defendants were "the main culprits of this fraud," he said. He said that students could face charges on the road.
Eric Levenson and Mark Morales of CNN contributed to this report.
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