Celebrity Parents, Coaches Charged in Elite College-Entrance Scam

Two defendants are scheduled to plead guilty in Boston on Tuesday, including Stanford's sailing coach, John Vandemoer, and William Rick Singer, who ran a college admissions counseling company in California and is central to the scheme. Singer cooperated with authorities after he was caught up in the plot and helped build cases against others, according to court papers.

The U.S. dubbed the investigation "Operation Varsity Blues," a reference to a 1999 film about a football team in Texas.

The scheme is alleged to have two key elements.

According to prosecutors, college entrance-exam proctors took bribes to help applicants cheat on admissions tests by allowing others to pose as test-takers or giving students the answers. In other instances, university coaches were bribed to designate applicants as athletic recruits "regardless of their athletic abilities" — or even, prosecutors said, when they didn't play the sport at all.

Yale, Stanford

Yale said in a statement that the school "has been the victim of a crime perpetrated by its former women's soccer coach," while UCLA, Georgetown and USC also suggested they were victims. Stanford said it is "deeply concerned about the allegations." Wake Forest, Stanford and the University of Texas announced Tuesday that they had suspended or fired coaches.

"Integrity in admissions is vital to the academic and ethical standards of our university," the University of Texas said in a statement.

The arrests "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, which administers the SAT, said in a statement.

At the center of the scheme is a Newport Beach, California-based company called Edge College & Career Network LLC, which was run by Singer, prosecutors said. He allegedly agreed with clients to have an accomplice, Florida resident Mark Riddell, take the ACT or SAT college admissions tests in their children's place or correct their answers after they took the exams themselves. The parents allegedly paid between $15,000 and $75,000 to Singer per test, structuring their payments as donations to a California-based charity affiliated with his company, Key Worldwide Foundation, according to prosecutors.

Singer instructed parents to "seek extended time on the exams, including by having their children purport to have learning disabilities," authorities claim.

Singer allegedly used the bogus charitable donations to bribe two other defendants, who administered the tests at a private school in Los Angeles and a public school in Houston, according to the indictment. The bribes to let Riddell take the tests were typically $5,000 to $10,000, the U.S. said.

The defendants disguised "the nature and source of the bribe payments by funneling the money through the accounts of a purported charity, from which many of the bribes were then paid," according to court papers.

He also helped parents construct phony athletic profiles for their children, which sometimes included photoshopped images, to supplement fraudulently obtained exam scores and inflated grades.

The yearlong investigation included wiretaps, undercover operatives and dozens of agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service from around the country. Lelling said the probe began when federal authorities were interviewing a target in a different case who tipped them to the admissions plot.

He said fake test scores were sent to Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern University. Coaches who took bribes put some of the money into their athletic programs, he added. No students were charged, and the universities are not targets of the investigation, authorities said.

– With assistance from Janelle Lawrence, Chris Dolmetsch and Bob Van Voris.