Education Celebrities, wealthy parents charged by FBI in college admissions scheme

The FBI on Tuesday charged dozens of wealthy parents, including celebrities Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, in a major cheating and bribery scheme to get their children admitted into some of the nation's most elite colleges.

The scheme involved bribing coaches and college administrators — with about $25 million in payments over seven years — and paying off college entrance exam administrators to allow students to cheat on their tests, according to charging documents.


Among those charged are "Desperate Housewives" star Huffman and Loughlin of "Full House" fame. Loughlin’s husband, clothing designer Mossimo Giannulli, was also charged. They and several others are accused of scheming to get their children into schools including Georgetown; Yale; Stanford; the University of Texas; the University of Southern California; the University of California, Los Angeles; and others.

Coaches at Georgetown, USC, UCLA and other schools face racketeering charges.

The FBI says the parents paid a college counseling and test prep business in Newport Beach, Calif., called “The Key,” which bribed college coaches and administrators and organized a scheme to help students cheat on college entrance exams, including the ACT and SAT.

The founder of The Key, William Rick Singer, who later cooperated with the FBI in the investigation, sold his clients on a “side door” to college admissions, which involved paying off coaches and administrators, according to charging documents. Between 2011 and 2018, they paid college officials about $25 million in all to designate their children as recruited athletes — regardless of their athletic abilities — or put them on other favored admissions lists.

Singer pleaded guilty to racketeering, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the government and obstruction of justice.

Andrew Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, called the parents charged “a catalog of wealth and of privilege.”

They include CEOs of public and private companies, successful investors, two actresses, a famous fashion designer and the co-chairman of a global law firm, he said.

“Based on the charges unsealed today, all of them knowingly conspired with Singer and others to help their children either cheat on the SAT or ACT and/or buy their children’s admissions to elite schools through fraud,” he said. “This case is about the widening corruption in elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud ... There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy."

Lelling said Singer’s clients paid between $100,000 and $6.5 million for his services, although the majority paid between $250,000 and $400,000 per student.

"If these allegations are true, they violate the essential premise of a fair and transparent college admissions process," Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, the leading higher education lobbying group, said in a statement. "This alleged behavior is antithetical to the core values of our institutions, defrauds students and families, and has absolutely no place in American higher education."

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Colleges involved in the scandal, including Georgetown, USC and Yale, have issued statements saying they are cooperating with authorities in the case.

Loughlin and her husband bribed USC with $500,000 to have their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team, even though they did not participate in crew, officials allege. Huffman and her husband paid The Key $15,000 to get in on the cheating scheme, the FBI says.

“Trojan happiness,” read the subject line of an email Giannulli sent Singer thanking him for getting his daughter into USC. Giannulli previously wrote that he wanted to "make sure we have a roadmap for success as it relates to [our daughter] and getting her into a school other than ASU!"

Singer told parents it was a “tried and true” method developed at multiple universities over years of work helping past parents get their kids admitted.

He bragged to coaches about how many others were already on board. In one conversation with the head coach of women’s soccer at Yale, he said, “For this year I did [seven elite schools], we’ve done it everywhere," the FBI alleged.

That coach later took a bribe to designate an applicant as a recruit for the Yale women’s soccer team, though she did not play competitive soccer. The applicant was admitted to Yale and The Key mailed the coach a $400,000 check, the FBI says. Relatives of the applicant paid The Key about $1.2 million in multiple installments.

The Key would make fake athletic “profiles” for the students, including bunk credentials — like fake honors they received and elite teams they played on. In some instances, parents would help by supplying staged photographs of their children engaged in athletic activity, according to the FBI.

The NCAA said in a statement that the allegations are "troubling and should be a concern for all of higher education. We are looking into these allegations to determine the extent to which NCAA rules may have been violated.”

In a separate cheating scheme, The Key would tell clients to seek extended time on the college entrance exams, including by claiming their children had learning disabilities, which generally bought them an extra day to take the test.

They would then change the location of the exam to one of two test centers Singer told them he “controlled” — a public high school in Houston and a private college prep school in West Hollywood. Parents were told they should come up with a reason — such as attending a bar mitzvah or a wedding — that they needed to be in those cities, according to charging documents.

The Key had established relationships with test administrators at the two testing centers who took bribes — typically about $10,000 per test — to facilitate the cheating scheme. They would let another person take tests in place of the students, or serve as a test proctor and give the students the correct answers or correct their exams after they took the test.

The test administrators then sent the doctored exams back to the ACT and the College Board, which runs the SAT, typically via either UPS or FedEx, the FBI says.

The College Board said in a statement that the charges "send a clear message that those who facilitate cheating on the SAT — regardless of their income or status — will be held accountable."

"The College Board has a comprehensive, robust approach to combat cheating, and we work closely with law enforcement as part of those efforts," the statement said. "We will always take all necessary steps to ensure a level playing field for the overwhelming majority of test takers who are honest and play by the rules.”

The students were often unaware their parents had arranged for the cheating, the FBI says.

"I mean [my daughter] is more the issue because she’s going to say to me, 'You know, well, why am I taking it up there?'" one parent, Michelle Janavs, who allegedly paid thousands for help getting her daughter into USC, said in a recorded call with Singer. "She’s smart, she’s going to figure this out."



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