@Cheeringsection, I think you are referring to the other article. emilybee’s link has no student perspective whatsoever.
Lori Loughlin should hire good lawyers (which I believe she has done) and listen to them. The US Attorneys have already gotten a bundle of guilty pleas on this case. They’re not bluffing, and she should have listened when her lawyers told her so.
This is backwards. As an inducement to plead guilty, prosecutors initially don’t charge people with all the crimes the prosecutors believe the defendants have committed. If the defendants admit they did the initial crimes, then as a reward for saving the public the trouble and expense of a trial, they aren’t charged with the rest of their crimes. But if the defendants want a jury trial, they’re going to be tried for everything the prosecutors think they did.
I’m also pretty sure I read several weeks ago that there were additional charges which would be brought against the defendants before anyone had entered a plea.
I don’t think donating to the Singer 401©(3) which would then make the donation to the school is unusual. Many people donate to the United Way and direct their donations to a different organization (YMCA, girl scouts, girls and boys club) and the United Way takes a portion for administration. United Way is a valid charitable organization even though it takes almost 20% of earnings as an administrative fee. Singer’s charity might be withing the tax rules too. It could be paying him an enormous fee for running it, and it was paying at least the asst athletic director at USC $20k/mo. If the charity was reporting that, and she was reporting it as income on her taxes, there might not be a tax problem for the organization. Very wasteful spending for a non-profit, but many non-profits work that way and pay their Presidents and board members huge salaries.
WHile LL really wanted her children to go to USC, so expected the donation to go there, it appears some of the other clients had multiple schools they were considering. Maybe Singer presented his charity as a way to park the money so it could go to the ultimate school, or go to multiple charitable accounts at the school (athletic, science department, building fund, etc).
Many people are used to giving a donation to organizations and getting something back. When my niece was 8, her parents gave a ‘donation’ to the ballet so she could be a ballet girl, which meant she got a red dress and walked across the stage at a special performance. What was the value of that? Who knows, but it cost $3000. I’m sure all the parents took it as a tax donation and the ballet may even have given them the amount they could deduct ($3000 - cost of the dress?). LL and family were used to making donations of this type. I’m sure she’s done it many times for different things for charity events. You buy a table for $10,000 and get to deduct it less the value of the dinners, or the round of golf, or the value of the swag bag. Many put the value right on the ticket.
LL’s kids went to catholic school and at many (don’t know if their school did this) there are two tuition prices, one for church members and one for non-members. At least at the school my kids went to, the members were expected to donate the difference in a weekly envelope/tithe to the church and thus could tale it as a tax deduction. Honestly, there was no penalty if you didn’t donate to the church and they didn’t throw your kids out of school, but it was expected. We didn’t get to write off tuition, but did get to take the church donation.
It was a fake charity used to distribute bribes to get kids into college.
“When families pay for either, either takin’ the test or goin’ through the side door, all the money goes through my foundation, and then I pay it out to whoever needs to get paid,” Singer said to one parent, in a conversation recorded by law enforcement. (The federal complaint identifies the speaker as “CW-1.” CNN has confirmed that CW-1 is Singer.)
That blunt admission from the California businessman, who pleaded guilty last week in Boston to four federal charges – racketeering conspiracy, money laundering, tax conspiracy and obstruction of justice – shows just how much the foundation corrupted its stated purpose of providing "guidance, encouragement and opportunity to disadvantage students around the world.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/19/us/college-admission-scam-foundation/index.html
If a foundation wants to donate to a college, it should go through Development, the “Corporate & Foundations” group. If you then want it earmarked for athletics (general or a particular aspect,) it goes to that pot.
Not a check to a coach or AD.
If it was a “fake charity”, then every contribution to it should be suspect and audited carefully because if any contribution came from a parent who also hired Singer’s firm as a college consultant, then they technically got something in return. It is odd that the feds not only did not do this, but in the article linked to the feds did not even indict one of the directors and secretary on the board of the foundation! It’s hard to believe the feds are saying those directors thought it was a legitimate foundation but the parents who were not paying for their kids SAT tests to be corrected but who thought they were making a donation that would give them a boost in admissions were supposed to know. It also appears that a lot of the money the foundation paid did go to the athletic departments and not into individual coach’s pockets.
I found it interesting that parents like Loughlin were much more concerned with USC finding out than the IRS looking closely at Singer’s foundation. Her concern seemed to be breaking USC rules and possibly having her kids expelled - not any legal jeopardy.
It wasn’t a fake foundation. It was properly registered with the IRS, a 501 © 3, and with the state of California.
When this investigation started last year, they didn’t even shut the foundation down. I believe the foundation even filed the correct reports showing which schools were getting the donations and are current in those filings. If the schools allowed the payments to be accepted by the athletic departments, then there wouldn’t have been an issue. The IRS wouldn’t have an issue with one properly formed charitable organization making a payment to another organization as long as all the reporting was correct. The Singer foundation could have made a purchase of 100 seats to an athletic banquet or made a direct donation to USC development without violating any rules. It’s the ‘donation for services/promises’ that was wrong, and that’s USC’s fault for allowing donations directly to the athletic department with no oversight.
I just watched a documentary on Netflix about the town of Dixon, IL. The treasurer of the town embezzled $54M over 20 years as she was able to move money between city accounts (and set up a false account) mostly because the town didn’t require double signing of checks. She created false invoices and she could authorize payment without a second signature or approval. If schools want control, they need to have every single cent brought into the school go through one office, no bank accounts in the departments, or somehow have a checks and balances system.
Singer admitted it.
I posted his exact words. In addition, he pleaded guilty to it.
My apologies. I did mean the link posted by @CU123.
Re the USA Today article, UChicago would be one of the last places someone would want to send an unqualified child, so not really a surprise that this student finds his peers qualified, at all wealth levels.
There is no place for an unqualified child to hide and hope to skate by there, or similarly rigorous places like MIT or Princeton.
What does “unqualified” even mean? Are you talking about a student whose parents paid for someone else to take their SAT/ACT exams? Students who legally paid a psychologist known to be “friendly” toward rich students who want certification that they need extra time and then take the SAT themselves using extra time?
Assuming they did not pay someone else to take their standardized exams, every student who is admitted as an athletic recruit to a university is “qualified” academically regardless of whether that student is truly the superb athlete advertised or the student lied about his or her athletic accomplishments.
Perhaps college admissions at selective universities should be seen as having a relatively low bar to be “qualified” (academically) and among those who hit that low bar, admissions will go to students who serve institutional needs, which includes truly superb athletes who will get varsity teams wins, children of very high donors who will get the university many millions, children of famous parents who help the PR factor, legacy students whose parents also donate generously, and extremely high achieving students of all backgrounds.
In this most recent admissions scandal, some parents paid to have help to cheat to make their child hit that relatively low bar to be “qualified” academically. And other parents did not pay to cheat to make their child hit that relatively low bar to be “qualified” academically since their child already hit that bar of being “qualified”, but paid in order to have their academically “qualified” child be considered in a category other than “extremely high achieving student” and lied about their child’s non-academic accomplishments on the application and made a big donation to the university to have their application considered as part of that group instead of the group of “extremely high achieving students of all backgrounds”.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/23/us/lori-loughlin-mossimo-giannulli-motion/index.html
"Seventeen parents charged in connection with the college admission scandal – including actress Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli – are asking prosecutors to hand over evidence, according to a motion filed Monday.
While the government has indicated discovery is “extremely voluminous,” the defendants have not received any of the evidence, the filing states. The legal team has also requested to suspend any major decisions until they can thoroughly review the prosecution’s findings ahead of the next scheduled hearing on June 3."
Also this:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-more-defendants-agree-plead-162534373.html
A coach and a parent both plead guilty and another coach is expected to plead guilty today.
From the Yahoo article above,
So the argument up thread that the parents donated to a legitimate charity for what they thought was a legitimate reason doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Singer’s company and Singer’s charity are two different entities.
MSNBC today roundly agreeing, “Aunt Becky’s lawyers are doing her no favors.”
Some of the positioning and delay tactics are not unusual.
I don’t even think they are delay tactics. The prosecutors were moving very quickly, asking for pleas before there has even been discovery (except media discovery). I don’t think most of those charged knew about the investigation until they were arrested. They are dealing with attorneys in LA and Boston, and court appearances in both places too. I can understand the “Wait, what are we even dealing with?” position of the defendants.
Did USC know of the back door contributions? Especially for those that went to coaches?
Yes, Iunderstand the wait til we see. My point is it’s not unusual, for a lot of reasons.
@lookingforward “Did USC know of the back door contributions? Especially for those that went to coaches?”
Good question. Don’t we already know for a fact that UCLA knew about contributions to the athletic department and even wrote an entire report on it a few years ago? Didn’t UCLA even interview Singer?
I’m wondering if many colleges know that coaches/athletic departments get donations directly. It doesn’t seem as if any of the colleges involved in this thought it odd.