William H. Macy must be having an awesome morning…
Hollywood actors, CEOs charged in nationwide college admissions cheating scam
Oh, no! Not Aunt Becky!
In other news, the sky appears blue, water remains wet and the sun IS expected to rise tomorrow in the east.
Who, exactly, were they bribing? I’m more concerned about universities overtly accepting bribes for admission (as opposed to the usual method of accepting “donations” in return for “special consideration”) than I am about specific rich people bribing them.
Half a million to get into USC? That is crazy.
Someone paid half a million dollars to get their kids accepted into USC???!?
Slipping the interviewer $100 would’ve been plenty enough to get both teens into Penn State.
What’s the point of money if you can’t use it to get your kids into a college they’d never be accepted to without it?
Wow! I just turned on the TV, prosecutors are giving a press conference on CNN, this is BIG!
These weren’t just a few bribes, the parents involved here, and their kids, and school officials, and test proctors, were all involved in actively rigging test scores and fabricating biographical information to get these kids into schools, and the payments were fraudulently passed through a non-profit and then written off on their taxes making this tax fraud as well.
This is not just a couple of well known actresses, this a widespread picture of wealthy people, they may not be as well recognized as the actresses but there are going to be all sorts of financial and political repercussions.
What a wonderful time to be alive!
…and then will be unable to cope in, so you’ll have to bribe more people to give them better grades, so they can graduate with a prestigious degree knowing nothing?
and one day, become President.
They talked about the scheme in emails and phone calls and then used a paper trail to try to disguise the bribes (as opposed to just hiding them by giving cash in an envelope)? One of the few things money can’t buy you is a brain and the willingness to use it.
It does make me curious about all the ways rich people use their affluence to cheat in other situations.
In some of the cases, such as Laughlin, they were allegedly bribing officials in the schools’ athletics departments, to have their kids accepted into the schools as athletes, when, in fact, the kids weren’t actually going to be members of those teams (and may not have actually competed in those sports at all).
Nitpick, most of the schools mentioned are not Ivy.
Some were. And “Ivy League” is a bigger brand/draw than “Felicity Huffman” and “Lori Loughlin”. 
I’m only seeing one, but I haven’t dug deeper than the quote. One one hand, if there were more, I’d think the article would jump at the chance to include more. On the other hand, I’d guess that more Americans think Stanford is in the Ivy League rather than Dartmoth, Brown or Cornell. Or UPenn, because obviously that’s just Penn State Philly campus right?
Man…at what point, dollar-wise, do you say “Gee, I guess my kid is just not cut out for this school”?
To play devil’s advocate - lots of people who are qualified to attend Yale and Stanford don’t get in, because they only accept a certain number of applicants, regardless of how many qualified applicants they receive. So at some point it becomes a crap shoot, especially at the most prestigious schools. So that explains the issue with bribing coaches.
Now having someone else take the SATs for your kids - that’s just remarkably stupid.
I just downloaded the FBI’s affidavit (to which this Washington Post article provides a link). Schools named in the first part of the affidavit are:
- Georgetown
- Stanford
- UCLA
- University of San Diego
- USC
- Texas
- Wake Forest
- Yale
So, yes, only one Ivy in that list. I skimmed through the affidavit (it’s long), and I see several other schools mentioned tangentially, including at least one other Ivy (Cornell).
Which law are they accused of violating? I’m not being obtuse; prior to this story I had no idea that trying to bribe you son or daughter’s way into college was a crime. A good way to get shown the door, sure, but a crime?
Mail fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, general fraud in that they deducted the bribes from their taxes as “charitable contributions,” etc.
Also, many internal to the universities were being bribed - for example, Yale’s soccer coach accepted $400k to put a kid on the team who didn’t play soccer.
Supposedly, Laughlin’s daughter had to have someone fill out the forms because she couldn’t figure it out. She’s on Instagram, and talks about how she didn’t even care about going to school and mostly wanted to party.