Special to the Recorder
“There’s no secret … anybody can be successful in anything if they just put in the time and work.” That’s what legendary University of Southern California (USC) water polo coach Jovan Vavic said in 2017 in an article published on USC’s website. Now, it looks like money helps, too.
Vavic was among the 50 defendants arrested in the nationwide college admissions conspiracy called “Varsity Blues” by federal prosecutors. Other high-profile defendants include actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. The scheme, orchestrated by William “Rick” Singer, involved two kinds of fraud, according to the prosecutors. One was to cheat on the SAT or ACT, and the other was to use Singer’s connections with coaches and use bribes, disguised as charitable contributions, to get the students in under fake athletic credentials.
The ACT/SAT scheme, per court papers, involved parents paying between $15,000 and $75,000 per test for a third party — usually Harvard grad Mark Riddell — to take the test in the place of the student, or replace their responses with his own. How he did it, reported the Wall Street Journal, allegedly involved Singer bribing test proctors, after many of these students received permission to take untimed tests, based on doctors’ notes attesting to learning disabilities. Riddell, a Florida resident, was able to get targeted test results. According to court documents, he is slated to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering, and faces up to 20 years in prison. He expects a reduced sentence in exchange for his cooperation.
The bribes to coaches are almost the more breathtaking allegations. The bribed coaches, who make recommendations on which recruited athletes should be accepted, were vouching for athletes who, in many cases, had never played the sports in which the coaches were claiming they excelled. According to numerous reports, Lori Loughlin, who played Aunt Becky on “Full House,” and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, are accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to have their two daughters designated recruits to the USC crew team, although neither daughter had ever competed in crew. The parents allegedly sent photographs of each girl on a rowing machine.
In the indictment, one parent was recorded in a conversation with Singer saying, “...you understand that [my daughter] is not worthy to be on that team.” The response from Singer was: “No, no, he’s my guy... [A]nd he knows [s]he’s not coming to play, he knows all that.” While the allegations haven’t been proven yet, this is compelling, and galling, evidence.
So how are the universities responding? So far, Yale has announced that they are rescinding the admission of one student as a result of their part in the scandal, which included their former soccer coach accepting bribes to recommend students who were not athletes. Other schools have launched investigations, and students at Stanford have filed class-action lawsuits, claiming that “unqualified students found their way into the admissions rolls of highly selective universities, while those students who played by the rules and did not have college-bribing parents were denied admission,” according to a UPI article published on March 14. The students also claim their degrees from Stanford will have less value “because prospective employers may now question whether she was admitted to the university on her own merits.”
What should happen to the students? Should students, who didn’t know they were admitted under false pretenses, be punished for their parents’ sins? At a minimum, they shouldn’t get the benefit of their parents’ criminal behavior. Perhaps they should be made to retake entrance exams, and reapply, on their own merits this time. If students did know, should they be prosecuted in federal court, marking them for the rest of their lives, for what their parents did? Surely, children should not be punished for the sins of their parents. Maybe the silver lining of the whole Varsity Blues case is that these children will learn important lessons about the price of feeling entitled.
Janet Johnson is a criminal defense attorney in Jacksonville who practices in state and federal courts. White collar crimes, including fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion, are among her areas of expertise. She is rated AV Preeminent on attorney rating website Martindale-Hubbell and has been named to the American Institute of Criminal Law Attorneys’ Top 10 Best Attorneys list. Johnson is also a legal analyst for CNN and HLN.
