Ex-Yale soccer coach, Greenwich businessman charged in college admissions scandal

In a September 2016 photo, Yale's women's head soccer Coach Rudy Meredith gives pointers to players during a scrimmage in Ocala, Fla. According to the federal indictments unsealed Tuesday, March 12, 2019, former Yale soccer coach Rudy Meredith put a perspective student who didn’t play soccer on a school list of recruits, doctored her supporting portfolio to indicate she was a player, and later accepted $400,000 from the head of a college placement company. (Doug Engle/Star-Banner via AP) less In a September 2016 photo, Yale's women's head soccer Coach Rudy Meredith gives pointers to players during a scrimmage in Ocala, Fla. According to the federal indictments unsealed Tuesday, March 12, 2019, ... more Photo: Doug Engle, Associated Press Photo: Doug Engle, Associated Press Image 1 of / 80 Caption Close Ex-Yale soccer coach, Greenwich businessman charged in college admissions scandal 1 / 80 Back to Gallery

The former Yale University women’s soccer coach has been charged in a nationwide bribery scandal in which he allegedly solicited and accepted bribes to designate applicants as recruits to his team.

Rudolph “Rudy” Meredith of Madison, who coached at Yale from about 1995 to November 2018, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, is charged with working with a California-based college counseling and preparation service that allegedly helped students cheat on their SATs and ACTs or paid elite college coaches to recruit students for their teams, regardless of their ability. He has been charged with two counts of wire fraud.

TV actors Felicity Huffman, who starred in “Desperate Housewives” from 2004 to 2012, and Lori Loughlin, who was in “Full House” and “90210,” as well as chief executives of major corporations, were among 50 people arrested in the cheating scam, according to court records.

Meredith was one of 50 people charged in what U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling, in a Boston press conference Tuesday, called “the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.” The conspiracy involved “cheating on college entrance exams” and “securing admission to elite colleges by bribing coaches at those schools to accept certain students under false pretenses,” he said.

The charges, which were unsealed Tuesday, said Meredith was arrested for “having devised and intending to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud, and for obtaining money and property, to wit, admission to Yale University, by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and to deprive his employer, Yale University, of its right to his honest and faithful services through bribes and kickbacks.” He has been ordered to forfeit a total of $866,000.

Beginning about 2015, Meredith allegedly conspired with William Rick Singer, owner of the Edge College & Career Network LLC, also known as “The Key,” “to accept bribes in exchange for designating applicants to Yale as recruits for the Yale women’s soccer team, and thereby facilitating their admission to the university, in violation of the duty of honest services he owed to Yale as his employer,” the charges state.

Singer also was chief executive officer of the Key Worldwide Foundation, a nonprofit corporation he established in about 2012, according to court documents. Singer pleaded guilty in Boston federal court Tuesday to charges including racketeering conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

The court documents identified “the head coach of women’s soccer at Yale” as a cooperating witness in the case since April 2018 “in the hope of obtaining leniency when he is sentenced.” The documents said he had pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy.

Singer and a former USC women’s soccer coach allegedly worked together in 2017 to help the student get into Yale. A false athletic profile created for the student said she played competitive soccer and had been on China’s junior national development team.

‘Dismayed and disturbed’

Yale President Peter Salovey said in a letter to the university community that he was “profoundly dismayed and disturbed” by the scandal. “As the indictment makes clear, the Department of Justice believes that Yale has been the victim of a crime perpetrated by a former coach who no longer works at the university,” Salovey wrote.

“We do not believe that any member of the Yale administration or staff other than the charged coach knew about the conspiracy. The university has cooperated fully in the investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case moves forward,” he wrote. Salovey said he would work with the athletics director and dean of undergraduate admissions to see whether further changes needed to be made in the admissions and recruitment processes.

Federal Complaint Against Rudolph Meredith by Helen Bennett on Scribd

“The corrupt behavior alleged by the Department of Justice is an affront to our university's deeply held values of inclusion and fairness. I want to assure our community that I am committed to making certain the integrity of the admissions and athletic recruitment processes is not undermined again.”

Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy issued a statement saying, “As the indictment makes clear, the Department of Justice believes that Yale has been the victim of a crime perpetrated by its former women’s soccer coach. The university has cooperated fully in the investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case moves forward.”

Lelling called the parents charged in the scheme “a catalog of wealth and privilege.” Other colleges Singer attempted to have admit his clients’ children included Georgetown, Stanford and Wake Forest universities, UCLA, the University of San Diego, the University of Southern California and the University of Texas at Austin. Huffman and others face up to 20 years in prison.

“This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud,” U.S. Attorney Lelling said at the press conference. “There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy and I’ll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.”

Prosecutors say parents paid Singer between $200,000 and $6.5 million, totaling $25 million, from 2011 through February 2019 to increase their children’s chances of getting into elite universities. They went as far as to submit doctored photographs showing their children playing a sport that they did not participate in.

Ernestina Hsieh, a first-year student at Yale, was surprised to hear about the scandal. “I didn’t think that things like this happened outside of movies,” she said.

Two sophomores, who asked to remain anonymous, also felt surprise, though to varying degrees. “I was shocked when I read the headline,” one said.

The other, though aware of the money that runs through the admissions process, still said he “didn’t really think it would be as big as that.”

Request for bribe in a hotel room

One applicant Meredith allegedly recruited was “falsely described” as “the co-captain of a prominent club soccer team in southern California.” After the student was admitted to Yale about Jan. 1, 2018, “Singer mailed Meredith a check in the amount of $400,000, drawn on one of the KWF charitable accounts,” the charges state. Later, relatives of the student paid Singer about $1.2 million through one of his nonprofit’s accounts. Lelling said Meredith accepted the applicant “as a recruit for the Yale women’s team despite knowing that the applicant did not even play competitive soccer.”

The charges also state that Meredith personally met with the father of another applicant from California in a Boston hotel room and asked for a bribe totaling $450,000. The meeting, which was recorded by the FBI, included a $2,000 up-front payment from the father. On or about April 18, 2018, Meredith received a payment of $4,000 via wire transfer “from a bank account in Boston, Massachusetts that, unbeknownst to Meredith, was under the control of agents of the FBI,” the document states.

The Yale University Department of Athletics announced in November that Meredith had resigned as head women’s soccer coach. Meredith was a three-time Northeast Region Coach of the Year and the team reached the NCAA College Cup, the national tournament, in 2002, 2004 and 2005, reaching the third round for the first time in school history in 2005. They ended the season ranked 13th in the NSCAA/Adidas national poll, according to Yale athletics site yalebulldogs.com.

When he resigned in November, Meredith said, “After 24 years at the helm of the women’s soccer program, it is time to explore new possibilities and begin a different chapter in my life. It is the right time to hand the team over to the next Yale women’s soccer coach who can guide the team into the future,” according to the website.

Given Meredith’s reputation — the athletics site dubs him “the winningest coach in Yale history” — Thomas Atlee, a sophomore at the university, felt sympathy for the athletes who played under the coach. “I feel it kind of tarnishes the hard work of everyone else on that team,” he said.

Meredith could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, Paul Thomas of Duffy Law in New Haven, did not return messages left for him.

Atlee also said he believes the scandal will reignite debate about athletic admissions at Yale and fears it will cast “an ugly shadow” over athletic admissions. Atlee is hopeful, however, that public opinion ultimately will be resistant to the scandal, which reflects the actions of an individual rather than the university’s entire athletic community.

“I think it’s a huge shame,” he said. “Admissions will probably take the coaches’ suggestions with caution ... Campus culture will probably suffer.”

Though not an athlete himself, Atlee has been convinced by arguments in favor of athletic recruitment. “Athletics are an important part of campus life and culture,” he said, adding that they help diversify the student body.

Another defendant named in the case was Gordon Caplan of Greenwich, co-chairman of New York international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher and The American Lawyer’s 2018 Dealmaker of the Year, according to the Connecticut Law Tribune.

In late 2018, Caplan participated in the college entrance exam cheating scandal by making a charitable $75,000 donation to Key Worldwide Foundation, in exchange for having the coaches obtain his daughter’s exam and correct the answers after completing it, court documents state.

Singer was a resident of Sacramento and Newport Beach, California, the indictment says.

Jim Shay and the Associated Press contributed to this story. edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382.