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.
These parents are all people in some kind of competition against their peers, relatives, neighbors, friends, etc. Saying your kid went to University of Wisconsin, doesn’t measure up to Wake Forest. Or telling your neighbor that your kid got accepted to the track and field program at USC....while they just never show up for any competitions. These rich folks all had money ‘to burn’.
But this ought to lead people to ask....are we giving out fake degrees to people who can’t handle the school work? You know....like AOC and her economics degree. Or how about Bush and his degree? Or Obama and his degree?
Political favors are as good as money to the right client middleman.
For sure but apparently not his guy.
Why would a pol have to go to an outside broker? They can offer government grants to colleges in exchange for whatever.
The people indicted may be rich and moderately powerful, but nowhere near powerful enough to cause trouble for an FBI agent or prosecutor. Unlike, for example, somebody like Hillary or somebody in her inner circle.
The best way for the spawn of these elitists to maybe get over their upbringing would be to have them go to an inner-city community college for two years, and live there on just enough money to survive....with a minimum wage job.
OMG. Going through FEC donor records on the perps....
ROTF!
Let’s just say that I’ve yet to find a Trump donor...
I would think that an Engineering degree in fields that are extremely challenging still means a lot.
I read that Gianulli, Lori Loughlin’s husband, is a USC grad. Those girls must reall be dumb if a legacy and and an outright donation couldn’t get them accepted.
A politician wants his kid in a prestigious school. He can use his influence to persuade university administrators to let his kid in. This probably goes on all the time. But this is a separate system of bribery than what we are talking about.
Even in this specific racket a politician grants favors to a middleman who doesn’t directly pay the politician but feeds money to the college admissions scheme on behalf of the politician. The money is laundered through a middleman.
This scandal is probably the tip of the iceberg and if one believes many politicians are corrupt then they likely would have had “opportunities” to take advantage of this system or systems like it.
Well...it frees up 200 agent to go on the attack for bigger and better targets
we had
NEXIUM
Pedophile networks
Now this scholarship net
And expect more hits are coming.
But the “students” caught wouldn’t be the lily-white sprog of the liberal rich so they dare not go there.
“I would think that an Engineering degree in fields that are extremely challenging still means a lot.”
When I went to school, having a degree from a name university WAS, in and of itself, important. Just as getting a law degree from Harvard would get you places that one from some less well-known school wouldn’t. In 1965, a Mechanical Engineering degree from one of these four schools said you got a superior technical education: MIT, Cal Tech, University of California @ Berkeley, and Stanford.
Oh come on.
Your post is like saying “as long as you’re driving a functioning car, it doesn’t matter if you’re driving a Toyota Corolla or a Bentley.”
The perception differential is enormous. Yes, I agree, once you are in a position and can demonstrate competence, nobody looks at your degree. But the white-glove degree gets you in the door and gives you all the opportunity in the world to demonstrate INcompetence, generally with no consequence.
Put it this way: The HR guy who hires the Stanford grad has not made a mistake if the hiree does not work out. But if the HR guy hires a guy from Snarfball U, then he’s made a serious error.
This falls under “fundamentals of industrial sales”. The inside decision-maker guy has to be able to make a justifiable decision.
I continue to be amazed at the scope and breadth of this fraud. At some level, I think you have to acknowledge it was brilliantly executed on quite a few levels.
“OMG. Going through FEC donor records on the perps....
ROTF!
Let’s just say that I’ve yet to find a Trump donor...”
Yoiks! THAT would be an interesting study.
Because its wrong! Its tax evasion, its despicable as well as immoral. This shouldn’t be trivialized and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law..period! just my humble opinion.
>morally onerous
curious phrase...
These are not kids looking for a career. This is the ruling class aristocracy who use their education ala Hitler.
The political class gets away with everything and will be untouched by this scandal.
Ben Shapiro published his orientation meeting at Harvard directed by Elana Kagen where he was informed that they had already made it, there would be no Paper Chase like classes, they would not fail.......blah, blah.
I think Hillary led the fight to remove grades all together and institute Pass/Fail and no one failed.
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