The initial plea does not mean that they will necessarily go to trial. It could also just buy time to see more evidence and to negotiate a better deal.
@OHMomof2 ‘s link is shocking yet not surprising. UCLA discovered that their athletic department was letting students’ parents bribe their way into the students’ admission. A track and field “recruit” who was not remotely qualified to run on UCLA’s excellent track team was admitted because her parents pledged $100K.
The recruit’s parents were friends with the assistant tennis coach. He connived with the track coach to get the young woman admitted, in exchange for a $100K donation. A member of athletic department’s fundraising staff was also involved. After the woman’s admission, the track coach emailed the fundraising person, “We got a deal at $25 x four years for track,” suggesting that both people knew exactly what transaction had just occurred.
UCLA found out about this and instituted new controls disallowing gifts from parents until a student enrolled. But I don’t see how that closes the loophole, because parents can still promise generous gifts in exchange for fraudulent admission. On the other hand, rich parents of athletes admitted honestly would also want to give gifts to the university, so it’s hard to know how to close this loophole if the athletic department is dishonest.
The fraudulently admitted student was not expelled.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-ucla-college-admissions-track-athlete-20190412-story.html
Good for Lori Loughlin for fighting this. She made a donation to a foundation because she was told by the guy who was highly recommended by prominent people that the way to get their daughter into the college you want to attend is to donate to his “foundation”. Singer’s foundation made lots of donations to athletic departments – that foundation was not allowed to give money directly to a coach, so if the people in the athletic departments were misusing it, that is their fault, not Loughlin’s.
It’s notable that there haven’t been any accusations that Loughlin’s daughters cheated on their standardized tests and had someone else take them or change answers. Maybe because that was offered and Loughlin knew it was wrong?
But it seems a reasonable possibility that Loughlin did not know it was wrong to make a large donation in exchange for getting your kid into a college you want, especially when the guy who all these celebrities was touting as the expert told her it was the way the system worked. I think a jury who heard all the people touting Singer and all the examples of rich people donating to get their kid in would assume that Loughlin believed that her donation was no different than all the other donors to the foundation.
Loughlin’s pleading not guilty allows her defense lawyers to subpoena the foundation’s complete records and have the list of ALL the donors to Singer’s foundation because if the assumption is that every donation to Singer’s foundation was a bribe to an athletics department, the federal government could be busy prosecuting a lot more parents.
Loughlin and her daughter did include false claims on her college application. Certainly rescinding her admissions is the reasonable response when a college application includes false information. But is that a federal crime now? I could see it being a crime if a scholarship or financial aid was given as a result of that false information, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I don’t think the heart of the corruption will be revealed without someone like Loughlin fighting this. And I wonder if a jury would convict her for being gullible and believing Singer. If she didn’t go to college herself, believing what Singer told her is a lot more plausible than the college-educated parents who paid money so that Singer’s Harvard grad “ringer” would take standardized tests for them. Loughlin didn’t seem to take Singer up on what was presumably his offer to have her daughter’s test scores raised by having someone else take them. But is there any evidence that she knew Singer was paying off coaches directly and not simply doing what the foundation always did which is donate to the athletic departments of those universities?
Also, as far as I can tell, the parents of the Stanford student who lied on her college application about her sailing prowess are not being charged by the feds yet. Those parents presumably gave money to Singer’s foundation and that foundation gave $500,000 to the sailing program after her admission.
I can’t figure out why the Stanford sailing recruit’s parents aren’t being charged but Loughlin is. Aren’t those cases exactly the same?
@observer12 and does that include fraudulently claiming that your daughter was a cox for crew when she’d never rowed a day in her life? It wasn’t just the donation that got the daughters in. They got in as athletic recruits. Loughlin knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn’t duped by Singer. She was complicit in the scam. There are audio transcripts proving that. As far as I can see the only recourse she has is to claim entrapment.
@observer12 And the pictures of her daughter’s on rowing machines?? How is that explained by her gullibility?
I am joining this thread bit late but is there any petition where parents and students as consumers demand a change in the process.
Why can’t there be a centralized body who will be keep a tab on who is applying and how many seats are there in colleges. Something like a centralized admission process where a government organization will control the admission process - Students will submit online application, colleges will have to declare their seats(Few states in India have implemented this process to reduce the bribe scandals) . The college can mark some seat as regular or higher payment seats (like OOS, international ) and also define the count on athletic seat. If we leave this matter between college admission staff and parents there is no check and balance. Shouldn’t there be a third body who keeps an eye on what is happening and have some accountability. Parents/Students when applying can decide if they will be able to afford a higher payment seat if they do not get a regular payment seat and then their application will be compared against availability of the regular or higher payment seat.
Should we look at other countries and see what solutions they have ? How do we approach the educators to bring this change. I do not know where we can participate to bring a change for future generation.
I agree that Loughlin was gullible about kids lying on their application about being athletes. I’m saying she did that because Singer told her that was how kids got admitted. Clearly the Stanford student who was expelled also lied on her application.
Can you explain what the difference is between the two cases and why Loughlin is being prosecuted while the parents of the Stanford student are not? Because they both did exactly the same thing.
The crew team lie?
If they’d just lied about the two daughters being on a crew team that would be a thing perhaps left between them and the college, but in conjunction with paying for that? Faking photos to further the lie? FWIW it was the dad (Mossimo), not the mom (Lori), who sent the fake rowing pics to USC.
The students ultimately declined to enroll at Stanford. That may be why.
I don’t see much difference between lying and faking photos to further the lie. You are lying, period. I’m not condoning the lie and a student who lies should have their admissions rescinded, just like what happened at Stanford.
But I’m confused as to what Lori Loughlin did that was different from what the parents of the Stanford “sailing” recruit did. They both clearly made huge donations to Singer’s foundation and those donations found their way into the athletic department.
But apparently the Stanford recruit’s parents aren’t being charged.
The students never enrolled at Stanford @observer12 . Unless you are referring to other students?
No, one Stanford student got in with false sailing credentials. She is the one Stanford expelled. But the feds didn’t charge her parents even though her parents also made a very big donation to Singer’s foundation that then made a big donation to Stanford’s sailing team.
Here is the link:
This seems to be what Loughlin did, too.
I believe, and I could be wrong, the difference is that the other parents chose to plead guilty. Loughlin chose not to accept the plea deal and has pleaded NG.
Lori Loughlin and her husband were both recorded on the phone discussing with Singer how they were going to lie to the IRS.
According to reports, the Stanford parents were not charged.
By the way, the article I linked to mischaracterized what happened at Stanford as if the coach had nothing to do with the admissions of the girl whose sailing credentials were faked by Singer.
"In late 2017, Singer brought an applicant to John Vandemoer. As part of the athlete recruiting process, Singer created a falsified sailing athletic profile to make it appear that this applicant was a real sailor,’ said the judge during that hearing.
‘Although [Vandemoer] did not help this candidate’s application in any material way, this candidate was ultimately accepted to Stanford partly due to the fact that she had fabricated sailing credentials.’
The judge then noted: ‘After her admission, Singer provided Vandemoer with $500,000 from the KWF charity, which was sent to the Stanford Sailing Program to be designated at the discretion of the Sailing Program coach to use an expendable amount.’
The word “material” and “partly due to the fact that she had fabricated sailing credentials” leaves a lot unsaid. If Singer just donated to the Stanford athletic department and the coach did nothing to help the kids who Singer faked sailing credentials for, why is the coach even pleading guilty? To what?
I see this one student is not the same two I thought you were referring to.
Maybe it was before the Feds were recording phone calls and gathering evidence, so they don’t have on that one’s parents what they have on the current indictments?
We know they declined to charge Bill Macy even though he was obviously as involved in the scheme as his wife, but the only calls they’d recorded on him were about the younger daughter and they decided not to cheat for her. All the recorded stuff on the older one was Huffman, not him. So, no charges for him.
@observer12 - or Vandemoer received over $750,000 to help get three students into Stanford, but two ultimately went elsewhere and the third did not need his help.
So the parents made a “donation” but their daughter was never recruited to sail.
I imagine that affects the contours of the crime in some way that makes charging the parents unlikely.