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Showing posts with label nationwide college admissions scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nationwide college admissions scandal. Show all posts
A
University of Southern California assistant women’s soccer coach
embroiled in the college admissions scandal will plead guilty and
cooperate with prosecutors, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Former coach Laura Janke will plead to one count of racketeering
conspiracy by May 30 and, as a result, will forfeit $134,000 and likely
receive the "low end" of potential jail time. She has also reportedly
agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the case, according to plea and
cooperation agreements filed in court.
The maximum sentence she was facing was 20 years, but it is likely
she will now get 27 to 33 months as a result of the plea. She'll also be
on supervised release for a term of 12 months. Janke must also pay any
tax penalties related to payments she received. The length of her prison
sentence is still going to be determined on how cooperative she is
going to be as a witness, prosecutors said.
Senator 1024ths also lied and was admitted to university as "a woman of
color" and a tenured "professor" so when do they go after her?
Janke
Another parent who worked with Janke also accepted a plea deal
recently:Toby MacFarlane, a parent charged in the case, will plead
guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest
services mail fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in
Massachusetts. MacFarlane had already telegraphed his intent earlier
this month to enter into plea discussions.
MacFarlane paid $450,000 to have his children admitted to USC as
recruited athletes and, working with Janke, helped create fake profiles
for the children. Janke then built profiles for both of MacFarlane's
kids: one for his daughter in 2013 claiming she was a soccer star and
another in 2017 for his son, claiming he was a basketball player. Both
children eventually wound up going to USC.
Janke was one of four USC officials charged in the case. Prosecutors
say she created profiles for a number of William Rick Singer's clients,
stocking them with fake honors for their respective sports.
In another example, Janke helped fabricate a bogus athletic profile
for the son of media executive Elisabeth Kimmel as an elite pole
vaulter, despite him having no record of ever pole vaulting. Janke even
used a photo of another individual pole vaulting as part of the
submission, prosecutors say. Kimmel has plead not guilty to charges of
mail fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. Kimmel
Janke's guilty plea stands in contrast with our latest update on the scandal, where we noted that some parents had decided to "punch back" and vigorously defend themselves in court.
“I expect a lot more guilty pleas,” Diane Ferrone, a criminal defense lawyer in New York who isn’t involved in the case, told Bloomberg about a week ago.
16 parents were recently indicted in the scandal about 2 weeks ago. Several weeks before that, we noted that
parents charged in the scheme were seeking out "prison life
consultants" to find out what life would be like in the big house.
We have been following the admissions scandal at length. As part of our coverage, we detailed how
financial speaking gigs and elite high schools helped facilitate the
scam for years. We've also covered the fallout from the scandal, like
when UCLA's Men's Soccer Coach and former U.S. Men's national team
player Jorge Salcedo recently resigned from his position at the university as a result of taking bribes. We also wrote about how students were being encouraged to fake learning disabilities in order to cheat on college entrance exams.
We profiled Harvard test taking whiz Marc Riddell, who was a key piece of the scam, in March. Prior to that, we also reported on the tipster who gave the SEC the lead on the admissions scandal.
From the Slope of Hope:
This morning's paper re-ignited my interest in the only family here
in town caught up in the nationwide college admissions scandal. As many
of you know, those nabbed in the scandal now fall into two camps: one of
which is those, such as Felicity Huffman, who had pled guilty,
expressed contrition, and are awaiting their (reduced) punishment, and
two, those like Lori Loughlin who have dug their 4" heels in and are
refusing to admit that half-million dollar bribes are maybe not 100%
totally legit.
The folks here in Palo Alto are fairly small potatoes: the man is an
oncologist (who faces the loss of his livelihood due to this mess) who
allegedly paid $25,000 to have his apparently retarded son get an 1190
on the SAT by way of fraud. Here's how the article begins:
What continues in the article is simply jaw-dropping: their lawyer
asserts that it wasn't a conspiracy because they didn't know a bunch of
other people were doing the same thing. He goes on to make some kind of
utterly bizarre metaphor with a spoke and wheels.
The lawyer then virtually goes into the realm of Godwin's Law when he
warns of a "drift toward totalitarian institutions." I gotta say, this
snippet really pisses me off, because the guy is asserting the presence
of a government entity which is actually trying to enforce a law or two
is some kind of jack booted thug. I'm sure Dr. and Mrs. Colburn would
have preferred the government to just mind its own damned business. The piece de resistance is actually twofold: first, the
targeted score (they were allowed to ask for a specific score) was a
laughable 1190, and second, the Colburns argue that what they did wasn't
so terrible, because some people paid even BIGGER bribes than they did.
In other words, if I pay $5,000 to someone to commit murder, that isn't
as bad as some other guy who paid $25,000 to commit murder.
And just in case you're wondering how tough it is to get into the aforementioned institutions, here's a taste:
In other words, if you can write your name in the ground with a
stick, you're in. (By way of contrast, Stanford's admit rate is about
4%).
Even if this scumbag lawyer gets his scumbag clients off the hook, I
gotta tell ya, social media is not going to be kind to the man's career,
or whatever is left of it:
