[SamAdams76]

I never understood the legal basis for prosecuting these people for fraud. Who exactly was the victim of this “fraud?”

The more deserving students who had their slots taken by dumber kids who had rich daddies.

[Sooth2222]

Quite a few years ago the NY Times dropped that the price Harvard was asking for a "back door" route to an admission acceptance letter was $500K.

It's probably ten times that now.

$325K to admit 2 kids to an elite college would be pretty cheap.

[Alberta's Child]

Those “more deserving students” cannot be victims of fraud because they aren’t legally entitled to those slots in college.

And since colleges really have no objective system for ranking applicants, there’s no way to accurately say who was “more deserving” anyway.

The real kicker here is that most of the students who got into these schools through these “fraud” cases were doing fine and getting good grades. So obviously they were well qualified to be there.

[9YearLurker]

I’d suggest the fraud was the college thinking they had taken in one more applicant for their legitimately qualified bucket, instead of one of their “otherwise of value” acceptance buckets. Though didn’t these fraudulent applicants involve the falsification of athletic achievement as well?

But selective “make an example” especially harsh sentences for widely perpetrated practices are usually dubious IMO.