I need a shower after reading court documents about the college bribing scandal. These are scummy, sleazy, disgusting people. All of them. They sluiced funds through a fake nonprofit to pay bribes (sometimes in cash) and “donations” to colleges. Arranged for exams to be taken by others, had answers changed.
Apparently some of their children did not know. Imagine explaining to your kids how you just blew up their lives and why they should trust you in the future.
Rick Singer, ringleader
Singer pled guilty to all counts on 3/12. His bond is secured by his brother’s property, as feds are seeking forfeiture of Singer’s property and assets. He set up a phony nonprofit to make “contributions” to colleges using the parent’s money to disguise what essentially were bribes.
The nonprofit organization: Mr. Singer established and runs the Key Worldwide Foundation, which purports to be a charity and which prosecutors say was used to disguise the true nature of payments from parents.
Mr. Singer also described how, after he became a cooperating witness and was told he could not talk to anyone about the investigation, he tipped off several families that his conversations were being recorded by the authorities and warned them not to incriminate themselves.
Gee, not very cooperating, is he? And also seems downright proud of what he did.
“If I can make the comparison, there is a front door of getting in, where a student just does it on their own,” Mr. Singer said in court. “And then there’s a back door, where people go to institutional advancement and make large donations, but they’re not guaranteed in. And then I created a side door that guaranteed families to get in. So that was what made it very attractive to so many families, is I created a guarantee.”
Hey, here’s another guarantee. Singer pleaded guilty to federal charges and is going to prison.
Here’s one example of Singer’s complete corruption. There are many others in the court document:
SINGER directed payments totaling approximately $350,000 to a private soccer club controlled by two USC soccer coaches. In exchange for these payments, the coaches designated four children of SINGER’s clients as recruits for the soccer team, thereby facilitating their admission to USC, despite the fact that none of the children played competitive soccer.
Many others were indicted too. Like this tennis coach who took cash bribes in parking lots.
Michael Center, head coach men’s tennis team, University of Texas at Austin
CW-1 has admitted to law enforcement agents that between the years of approximately 2011 through 2018, clients paid him approximately $25 million—mainly funneled through the KWF charitable accounts—to bribe coaches and university administrators at elite universities nationwide. In exchange for the bribes, the coaches and administrators agreed to designate the children of these clients as recruited athletes, or some other preferred category,2 thereby facilitating the children’s admission to the universities.
CW-1 has advised investigators that, in or about June 2015, he flew to Austin, Texas and met with CENTER in a hotel parking lot. CW-1 stated that he gave CENTER approximately $60,000 in cash.