Posted on 03/14/2019 9:03:23 AM PDT by Beautiful_Gracious_Skies
Nearly a Dozen Real Estate Honchos Charged in College Cheating Scheme
Nearly a dozen real estate CEOs were among the nearly 50 people charged in a nationwide scheme to cheat on college entrance exams to get children into elite colleges, federal prosecutors said.
The mostly California-based suspects, which include a former Cushman & Wakefield broker and the former CEO of investment management firm Pimco, allegedly bribed coaches and school administrators to gain admissions into schools like Yale, Stanford, USC and Georgetown, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston announced this morning.
From 2011 to 2019, prosecutors said that William Singer, 58, of Newport Beach, Calif., would bribe exam administrators to allow test takers to take the SAT and ACT on behalf of students or fix the tests afterward. Singer would also pay off athletic coaches and school staff to get others into universities by claiming they were recruited to play sports.
Under the scheme, Singer would hide the payments from parents, which included actress Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, through a non-profit he ran, prosecutors said.
Among the 33 parents charged by federal prosecutors on Tuesday in the scheme include former C&W broker and founder of Woodside, Calif.-based developer WP Investments Bruce Isackson, 61, who was charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
Other real estate bigwigs hit with the same charges include Douglas Hodge, 61, the former CEO of Pimco; Robert Flaxman, 62, the CEO of California-based Crown Realty & Development; Manuel Henriquez, 55, the CEO of venture lending platform Hercules Capital; William McGlashan Jr., 55, a senior executive at private equity firm TPG; John Wilson, 59, the CEO of Massachuets-based developer Hyannis Port Capital; Robert Zangrillo, 52, the CEO of Miami-based developer Dragon Global and Jane Buckingham, 50, the CEO of marketing company Trender which worked with brands like Gap and Target.
Once the kids were labeled LD, they had unlimited time over a two day period in a private room with a bribed proctor.
For the writing portion of the SAT, some parents sent a photo of their kid and a hand-writing sample to Singer and he procured the 'smart body double.'
ANYONE NOTICE THERE ARE NO POLITICIANS IN THESE ARRESTS?........................
LOL, Looks like a lot of professionals who made lots of $$$ are going to lose their licenses. Burger King and Target might be hiring......
So kick the kid out of school. Rich people buy college for their kids. Been going on forever. Not sure why this warrants hundreds of FBI agents’ time.
I also see no mention of the corrupting influence of Title IX both in terms of putting females in administrative roles for which they are unsuited and in terms of the ‘recruit female athletes for sports for which there are no audiences.’
I don’t get it. I don’t get the desire for the status of saying your kids went to Ivy League or other prestigious colleges such as Stanford.
I’ve heard that once you are in a career field, that nobody cares where you went to college.
I’ve worked with many top notch professionals, who went to colleges that were not prestigious, and some I had never heard of. Yet they had the requisite degrees in the professional field to embark on their career. They didn’t need to go to Harvard to be successful in a career.
The news keeps saying the kids were in the dark. First of all, they are not kids, they are 18 or older, B) they thought it normal to take the test in a different locale and under different conditions than their classmates? 3a) They didn’t think it odd they were on a sports team they had no participation with or had never played?
These “kids” are just as culpable as their parents. They should be expelled and they should pay for the students who were not admitted or could not participate on the team due to their behavior.
These students should be arrested as co-conspirators.
Chelsea got into Stanford. Obama got into Columbia without attending any classes and graduated. Moochie's tennis teacher was the guy at Georgetown they nabbed.
Moochie did complain about having to pay back her student loans, which was probably from the non-minority status portion of her time at Princeton.
Fraud, tax fraud, forgery, plus the civil possibility of otherwise qualified kids not getting a seat in favor of the dumb rich kid with the morally onerous parents.
Many of those kids graduated, which calls into question how they graduated.
It’s massive, and its definitely worth their time.
These people of wealth had all the money they needed for their lifetimes and for their kids to inherit.
The FBI ain’t got anything better to do, you know...No problems with the past administration or the present “shadow” government...
It doesn’t. Look elsewhere b/c this is a Squirrel!! Event
Has anyone bothered to tie this to NCAA recruiting practices? I am certain it would yield a much larger pool of guilty candidates.
“I’ve heard that once you are in a career field, that nobody cares where you went to college.”
Well, at least insofar as my career was concerned, having an engineering degree from one of the top Engineering Schools in the country was definitely a door opener for the positions I sought. Several companies wanted to review my college transcripts to see just how good a student I actually was. But some accepted the fact of my graduation as evidence of my understanding of my field.
It sends the message that “there’s a new sheriff in town”. You’ve got to root out corruption and renew the rule of law somewhere. We’d all prefer they start with the treasonous Obama / Clinton cabal, but they are too well shielded.
the long and the short of it is that the rich and connected finding more and more ways to keep themselves “rich and connected”....the actual working classes are being permanently excluded....
Of course buying access is nothing new. In those transactions, there are no laws or rules being broken. Both parties are aware and in agreement.
In these latest cases it's alleged that the school administrations were not aware of what was going on. Only certain individual staff, such as coaches for example.
Documents were forged. Test scores were forged.
This is a different deal.
We got fake IDs made up and I took the SATs for about a dozen of my friends in high school just for fun!
I think it makes these idiot parents feel good and look good in the public arena.
Well, they give scholarships to athletes who are not qualified for junior high. What do I care if Harvard gives a spot to some millionaire’s kid in exchange for money? I understand the test cheating is wrong, but 200 FBI agents? A million dollar bond?
This is basically a big publicity stunt for corrupt federal prosecutors who did not indict Hillary Clinton for treason as they should have, but get to have a show trial for celebrities instead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.