A massive nationwide college entrance exam cheating plot was exposed Tuesday, resulting in charges for dozens of people, including Full House actor Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives.

Among those charged are three accused of organizing the scheme, two ACT/SAT administrators, an exam proctor, one college administrator, nine coaches from elite schools, and 33 parents, US Attorney for Massachusetts Andrew Lelling said Tuesday.

The scheme, referred to by the FBI as Operation Varsity Blues, involved facilitating cheating on SAT and ACT exams for students and bribing college administrators and coaches to recruit students as athletes, according to a criminal complaint from the FBI in Boston.

"There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy and I will add there will not be a separate criminal justice system either," Lelling said. "For every student admitted through fraud, an honest, genuinely talented student was rejected."

For the college entrance exams, cheating was facilitated in some cases "by posing as the actual students, and in others by providing students with answers during the exams or by correcting their answers after they had completed the exams," according to the criminal complaint.

In many instances, the students taking the exams were unaware that their parents had arranged for this cheating, the FBI added.



University athletic coaches and administrators were also allegedly bribed "to designate applicants as purported athletic recruits — regardless of their athletic abilities, and in some cases, even though they did not play the sport they were purportedly recruited to play," court documents state.

In some cases, photos of the students playing sports were staged, and some even had their heads photoshopped onto the bodies of real athletes.

Between 2011 and 2018, about $25 million in bribes were allegedly paid to the coaches and administrators.

The schools that accepted the students include Yale, Stanford, UCLA, Georgetown, the University of San Diego, Wake Forest, the University of Texas, and the University of Southern California.

William “Rick” Singer, 58, of Newport Beach, California, was the ringleader of the operation, funneling money through a “purported charity” he had established called the Key Worldwide Foundation, according to the US District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.

Singer, who was charged with racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and obstruction of justice, pleaded guilty Tuesday afternoon.

"I am absolutely responsible for it," he reportedly told a federal judge Tuesday. "I put everything in place. I put all the people in place and made the payments directly."