Free Republic

The first two parents entered guilty pleas in the Operation Varsity Blues investigation on Wednesday. Bruce Isackson, 62, and Davina Isackson, 55, of Hillsborough, Calif., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. Bruce also pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the IRS. As part of their deals, prosecutors will recommend that Davina serve between 27 and 33 months in prison while her husband will likely spend somewhere between 37 and 46 months. The charges are remarkably similar to the ones facing...

The "Full House" actress, who is free on bail, waived her right to appear in a Boston courthouse and allowed her lawyer to enter a not guilty plea to all charges Lori Loughlin pleaded not guilty on Monday to federal charges that she allegedly laundered money in a complex scheme to buy her daughters' way into college. The "Full House" actress, who is free on bail, waived her right to appear in a Boston courthouse and allowed her lawyer to enter a not guilty plea to all charges, according to papers filed on Monday by defense attorney William Trach.

A Stanford University student who lied about her sailing credentials has been kicked out amid fallout from the college admission scandal, the school announced. The unnamed student, who is a female according to the school’s student-run paper The Stanford Daily and was mentioned in federal court transcripts, lost all of the class credits she’d earned and was recently expelled, the school said on their website. “We determined that some of the material in the student’s application is false and, in accordance with our policies, have rescinded admission. Any credits earned have also been vacated. The student is no longer on...

American college is terrible and, as a society, we should stop doing it – at least how it is being currently done. The greatest benefit of a system where most citizens are pushed to get college educations, whether they truly need and want one or not, would be a society of really smart, informed, and engaged citizens. Do you see that happening?No, you do not.Instead, we have a bunch of people who are dragged down by crushing debt after wasting years of their youth chasing a piece of paper that often has no relationship to these graduates’ futures. Compounding the...

Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman won't be spared prison time in any plea bargain they cut for their alleged involvement in a college admissions scandal, according to a new report. Law enforcement sources told TMZ that prosecutors in the case will recommend that prison time be attached to any deal. "You can't have people being treated differently because they have money," an official told the website. "That's how we got to this place. Every defendant will be treated the same."

Morrie Tobin was in Boston to cut the deal of his life. It was early April last year. A few weeks before, federal agents had descended on the multimillion-dollar home Tobin shares with his wife and some of their six children in Hancock Park, a moneyed Los Angeles enclave. Warrant in hand, the agents searched the French chateau-style mansion for financial records and other evidence to nail Tobin, the suspected ringleader of a stock scam that defrauded investors of millions of dollars. The raid imploded Tobin’s very comfortable life. Faced with the prospect of years in prison and a seven-figure...

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has reportedly opened an investigation into several universities at the center of a college admissions bribery scandal. Politico, citing individuals familiar with the investigation, reported Monday that the Department of Education is looking into whether the universities broke laws or rules “governing the Federal student financial aid programs” or “any other applicable laws." **SNIP** The Education Department sent letters to the presidents of Yale, UCLA, Stanford, Wake Forest University, the University of San Diego, Georgetown University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California informing them that the universities faced a “preliminary...

Operation Varsity Blues, the federal investigation into wealthy people gaming the system by getting their children into prestigious colleges through bribes and falsified test scores, has sparked a lot of jokes and scuttlebutt given the famous names involved in the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Lori Loughlin and her daughter, Olivia Jade, are perhaps the largest names involved in a scandal that saw Olivia Jade get into USC as a student athlete — a rower, to be specific — despite not actually being on the team or having any experience on boats beyond her...

When I was eighteen, I won a scholarship to the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. I wanted to go. My dad refused to send me to a "fruit school," as he called it. Years later, after wasting thousands of his dollars by dropping out of ASU (because I didn't go to class—a fact I'm not proud of) we had another moment to talk about what went wrong. I asked him again why he didn't want me to go to Roosevelt and he repeated, "That's a school for fruits." I looked at him and said, "Dad, when...

As the investigation into the college admissions bribery scandal continues, prosecutors learned that grades and test scores weren’t the only things that William “Rick” Singer faked. The mastermind revealed that he also falsified students’ ethnicities to get them into the country’s top universities. According to the New York Post, Assistant US Attorney Eric S. Rosen told Judge Rya ­Zobel that Singer “[lied] about students’ ethnicities and other biographical information in an attempt to take advantage of perceived benefits from affirmative action and other programs.” The case, which is the largest college admissions scam in the history of the U.S., has...

**SNIP** • Some of the parents who are accused of cheating to get their children into elite schools are facing civil lawsuits in addition to federal criminal charges. • Meanwhile, there is talk in Congress of new laws aimed at cracking down, and the Department of Education is also reviewing the case. • Some of the defendants are already feeling the effects of the scandal. Actress Lori Loughlin and her daughter have lost work. Two members of the board of a top Newport Beach prep school stepped down, as has a top investment banker. • Several of the colleges involved...

It is no coincidence that the list of parents indicted for buying their children entrance to allegedly prestigious colleges contains so many denizens of Hollywood and venture capital and investment banking.  Both professions sell illusions and dreams: outright fiction or the promise of profit. The purportedly "elite" colleges and universities into which they bribed their kids also sell the illusion that merely being associated with them will confer lifelong important advantages.  That is not nearly as true as they would have you believe.  In fact, in many if not most circumstances, enrollment in a nationally prominent purportedly "prestigious" institution of higher education is less...

The best take I’ve seen yet on the college athletics admission scandal is that someone needs to do a comedy movie where the non-athlete students are forced to play after all, go through grueling practice, with predictable results—they win! Because Hollywood! Because who doesn’t like a good underdog story—you know, those “underdogs” from rich and famous households who just need one tiny break to get into the big leagues. Possible movie titles, suitably amended, include: “cRudy!” “Who-Hoosier?” “Not Even Semi-Tough.” “Any Given Study Hall.” “Friday Night Not-So-Bright Lights.” “The Longest Harvard Yard.” “A Bush League of Their Own.” “Bull Studies...

Hollywood celebrities are constantly lecturing the rest of America on how to live, what to eat and who to vote for. They're better than you and me. But now and then things go wrong. Like yesterday: This doesn't happen every day: Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and Loughlin's fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, were arrested Tuesday and charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to cheat their daughters into college.The three were charged along with nearly 50 other people in a scheme in which wealthy parents allegedly bribed college coaches and insiders at college testing centers to...

CNN host Don Lemon managed to connect President Trump to what has been called the “largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice” on Tuesday night by saying the president also benefited from a rigged system that favors the elite. Earlier in the day, law enforcement officials announced 50 indictments for those involved in a scheme in which wealthy parents allegedly paid large sums of money for their children to be accepted at prestigious universities across the country. Among the high-profile individuals swept up in the controversy are TV actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. When Lemon...

Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and a slew of chief executives are among 50 wealthy people charged in the largest college cheating scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice, federal officials said Tuesday. Those indicted in the investigation, dubbed "Operation Varsity Blues," allegedly paid bribes of up to $6.5 million to get their children into elite colleges, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Southern California, federal prosecutors said.