https://wtop.com/local/2019/03/e ... s-cheating-scandal/
The Georgetown caseA charging document alleges that an applicant to Georgetown in 2015 indicated that she was ranked in the top 50 in the United States Tennis Association’s Junior Girls rankings for her sophomore through senior years of high school, and made the USTA All-Academic team in her last two years. The document says USTA records show she played no tournaments in high school.
According to charging documents, the applicant sent Ernst an email in August 2015, which was actually written by Singer, saying, “I have been really successful this summer playing tennis around the country. I am looking forward to having a chance to be part of the Georgetown tennis team and make a positive contribution to your team’s success.”
Ernst forwarded it to an admissions officer the next day with the note, “Potential spot,” the documents said.
Singer then rewrote the applicant’s admissions essay to add, ““[B]eing a part of Georgetown women’s tennis team has always been a dream of mine. For years, I have spent three-four hours a day grinding out on and off court workouts with the hopes of becoming successful enough to play college tennis, especially at Georgetown. What is most amazing is how quickly I connected with Coach Ernst. He spent time with me while on campus and at several tournaments I played in.”
In November 2015, the girl received a letter from Georgetown saying her admission was “likely” after an initial review “at the request of Mr. Gordie Ernst, tennis coach.”
A few months later, the family sent a check for $400,000 to Singer’s foundation. The documents said one of Singer’s co-defendants had also taken the ACT for the daughter.
In October of last year, Singer called the student’s mother, saying that his foundation was being audited and wanting to “make sure that you and I are on the same page. In case they were to call.”
He also said, “I’m not gonna tell the IRS that, you know, (his accomplice) took the test for (the student) or that … you know we paid Gordie to help her get into Georgetown, right?”
50 chargedAround 50 people — coaches, test administrators and parents — nationwide have been named in indictments so far.
Singer’s activities included paying people to take tests for students or correcting their answers afterward. Singer would advise parents to get their children diagnosed with learning disabilities so that they could have extra time to take standardized tests, including the SAT and ACT, and they could take them alone, with proctors Singer had bribed.
Singer also arranged fake athletic profiles for students in order to enhance their value to universities, in some cases taking photos of students playing sports they didn’t really play, and Photoshopping children’s faces into photos of athletes.
Parents then wrote letters falsely claiming that no goods or services were exchanged, which also allowed them to take tax write-offs for their payments, which prosecutors said ranged from $100,000 to $6.5 million, though most payments ranged from $250,000 to $400,000.
Among the indicted include three people who organized the alleged scam; two SAT/ACT exam administrators; one exam proctor; one college administrator; nine coaches, and 33 parents.
In one case, a former USC women’s soccer coach and a consultant allegedly worked together in 2017 to help a client’s child get into Yale in exchange for $1.2 million from the family. A false athletic profile created for the student said she played competitive soccer and had been on China’s junior national development team.
The profile was sent to the coach of the Yale women’s soccer team and the student was accepted. Prosecutors said the Yale coach, Rudolph Meredith, received $400,000 from the consulting company after the student was accepted, even though he knew the student did not play competitive soccer.
Meredith is also named in an indictment as having solicited a bribe directly from a parent.
‘Your donation is gonna be 50’In a statement Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors released a partial transcript of a phone call Singer had with a parent.
“OK, so … what we do is we help the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids into school,” Singer said. ” … My families want a guarantee. So, if you said to me, ‘here’s our grades, here’s our scores, here’s our ability, and we want to go to X school’ and you give me one or two schools, and then I’ll go after those schools and try to get a guarantee done.”
He told another parent, “The number on the testing is $75,000. OK? It’s $75,000 to get any test scores you would like to get on the SAT or ACT.” He added that the parent needed for his daughter “to be stupid” when she was tested for a learning disability.
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