The racketeering charges were brought against Singer, Heinel, and the coaches.
The parents were charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
Some of these parents are lawyers. They knew the legal consequences if caught.
^^ and if you read the transcript, several expressed concern repeatedly. Singer kept reassuring them, even when he knew he was caught and was recording their conversation.
“But it’s totally plausible to me that university staff would take their colleagues at their word in good faith. That’s how I saw it work.”
that is exactly what happened at USC. the admissions office trusted Heinel and were utterly blindsided by her actions. they saw her as a “trusted colleague” and had no reason to think otherwise. Until it was revealed that she wasn’t.
this was what I was told by the Dean of Admissions at USC.
Almost everyone working in a college setting works with honesty and integrity.
Has everyone forgot the statistics behind this thing? It was a teeny teeny tiny amount of people over the millions attending and working at colleges over all these years in question.
Again, challenge anyone to name another person involved besides the two Hollywood gals involved. Someone paid 1.2 million and another paid almost 6M at the other schools. How many can name the parent or school? People just love a Hollywood tale.
And the athletic’s speculation is absurd. Those with actual athletes are overwhelmed by the generalizations and “expert positioning” by those with little to no experience in college sports that only perpetuate a collection of uninformed guesses and inaccuracies. Being familiar with DIII does not make one an expert DI. Each team within each sport operates in it’s own way, and certain people have certain responsibilities, also unique to that team. There are plenty of teams where people do not quit when they get there, it actually isn’t common (“common” - another too loosely used term). And having one recruited/playing soccer or football does not make one an expert on tennis or basketball. Playing at one league/school is different than playing for another league, another school. A real athlete is nothing like a fake athlete. Honest recruiting (common) is nothing like dishonest recruiting (rare).
Generalizing is so dangerous and just leads to stereotyping and bigotry. I choose to believe the people I work with do the right thing. And if one person happens to do wrong, I don’t believe the whole world is evil.
What schools did they pay $6M and $1.2M for? I hope the $6M was for Yale or Stanford. Seems like you could probably get into most places legally by donating $1M or more.
@sattut Not entirely true. Even development candidates have to meet a bar, albeit lower bar. And we don’t know the grades or profile of these kids. They may have been very weak.
And stanford and Yale. 6m gets you a modest bump. 10mm plus minimum to even move the needle.
The 1.2M was for Georgetown, I think. The girl bragged about it to her friends. Her parents paid for someone to take her ACT as well as three subject tests. They also paid for her to be on the tennis team.
In addition to the fees for taking her tests for her,
If one assumes honesty and integrity are more likely because people aren’t there for the money, that might not apply to college athletics at least for that reason. This is the highest income opportunity, by an order of magnitude, for many of the people involved in college athletics esp. if it involves money sports. This is not to say that such people lack integrity. But they should be dealt with on a businesslike basis, with appropriate checks and oversight.
In the case of this particular scandal, the payoffs to athletics folks were huge, dwarfing the fees to the guys involved in faking test scores.
“what is it going to do with these students”
We don’t know yet whether there are going to be waves of expulsions and revoked diplomas, but the families are getting ready for academic contingency plans. In the last few days, I’ve been contacted by two law firms on opposite coasts representing involved students, and I’m flying to one of them tomorrow to start serving as an educational consultant to that firm. Obviously, I won’t be able to identify the client or the school.
Maybe the coach spotted raw athletic talent. Maybe she made a couple goals, on film, that looked like Zidane even though her team lost. Maybe a basketball player is raw but he’s over 7 feet tall and growing into his body. Is admissions going to interview coaches for their athletic justifications? I wonder if there’s a reasonable way to do this other than the coach being able to say “just trust me” – are coaching ratings from combines and sports camps numerical and public? Can admissions read recommendations from the kid’s high school sports coach? Something admissions could look at with ordinary rational review not requiring special athletics knowledge.
Dr. Dre is proud of his D’s acceptance to USC on her own merits: "no jail time’ he boasts.
(Of course, Dr. Dre had previously donated $70M to the school to fund an arts program and a building with his name on it.)
The NYT article posted above is very interesting. the asst Athletic Director at USC was clearly running the show. She did have to meet with admissions weekly but she could easily hide a recruit here or there, because it really doesn’t matter if the soccer team has 30 or 31 players, and number 31 is likely to drop off the team anyway. She was quite the dictator, telling the coaches to take the one more player and she held their budgets hostage too. so they didn’t have a lot of choice.
It seems she made some stupid decisions and put some fake athletes on teams they clearly weren’t able to even pretend they could handle. A 5’5" football player? Why not put him on soccer? Why not put girls on the fairly new lacrosse team (started in 2013)?
It is hard to believe that no one at USC knew or suspected something was shady with Heinel because frequent enormous “donations” were coming in from the parents of the students mismatched to their sports. When big money comes into universities, a lot of people in development and administration notice and ask about it. That’s not something you can hide. Oh, you got another $100k for women’s soccer? Who gave that? Oh, it was the parents of a tiny male football player who never played on the team. Interesting.
Much more likely that people knew or suspected something was fishy and went along, partly because she was bringing in so much money for the university. I’d like to hear what the financial people who control the athletics bank accounts say about what they knew and whom they told about those donations. But unless those people did something illegal too, their stories are unlikely to get to the public.
Assuming the NYT article lends insight, in 2010, after an NCAA investigation and penalties, the U “moved swiftly” to “clean house” and “(beef) up the rules compliance office,” etc. I’d say, not.
Not if Heinl got away with helping “get more than two dozen students admitted as athletes, federal prosecutors charged, though none of them were qualified to play competitive sports” and “stands accused of collecting more than $1.3 million in payments directed from parents through Mr. Singer between 2014 and 2018, and drawing $20,000 per month from Mr. Singer since last July through a sham consultant agreement.”
“Qualified” can mean some unusual situations, sure. The 7’ bball possibility, added as a wild maybe. But that’s not the case here.
And remember, it seems the illegal $ was coming to the U from Singer’s foundation, not Mr & Mrs “Want In.”
Did the $ even go to the school, or in a number of cases did it go to people taking bribes? In that case, the U has no visibility.
70mm gets you in the front door. I see why 600k or whatever needs to climb in through an unlocked window or something.
I think the numbers of the money paid by the cheaters is astounding to the regular person. And is really not a big deal for development dept form an admissions perspective
Or they were looking in the wrong place… or a corrupt person played up the image of the “strict enforcer” to stay above suspicion.
If I was a judge and could do what I want in sentencing in some kind of idealistic court, I would fine all these parents the total of what they had spent on both bribes and legal fees, to be put into a trust for meeting need for other students who legitimately earn their place but fall short of being able to fund their own dream schools, with offers legitimately earned.
Can’t seem to link it, but Yahoo news just posted a pic and article that Dr. Dre’s daughter got into USC on her own merits…6 years after he and his fellow rapper/business partner donated 70 million to the school. Huh? 70 million would get Kermit the frog admitted.
To be fair, I have no idea if her application was strong enough to get in without 70 million.