GUILTY Nationwide College Cheating Scandal - Actresses, Business Owners Charged, Mar 2019 #4

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A naive question. Several times, in magazines and books, I have read that, for example, it is easier to be admitted to an Ivy League college if your father graduated from it. Lots of amenities in college are donations of former alumni.

And there are perfectly legal donations to colleges, they need libraries, they need better systems.

And there are courses preparing for SAT, ACT, GRE, MCAT, what not.

500,000 donation could be good for a library, or a study hall.

Why did these actors/actresses/others need to get in cahoots with some shady organizations, unknown names, if they could be the official donors to the schools?

Especially since UCLA is not an Ivy League school, and while SAT has a complicated scoring system, ACT is very straightforward. I mean, unless the kids were very stupid, a good tutor could have prepared them?

In other words, why, instead of going the prestigious donors’ way, the celebrities chose the illegal, shady one?

This shady foundation must have served the parents, the middlemen, and someone from the schools.
 
It seems that the kids really did poorly on tests and artificially inflating their scores was the important part of the scheme.

Think of it. Our kids who honestly took SATs could have been pushed back by competing with purchased results...

However, here is an interesting point.

Charity That Allegedly Took Bribes To Get Millionaires Into College Claimed To Be About Helping The Underprivileged - The Daily Caller

“Singer is the founder of a for-profit “life-coaching” company with the same name as the foundation. He also created the University of Miami Online High School, with “a student population of over 18,000 students annually, each paying over $15,000 per year to attend.” The high school was purchased in 2007 by Kaplan College Preparatory, a for-profit education firm then associated with The Washington Post.”

Kaplan is a course preparing for SAT, ACT, GRE, GME, MCAT, what not...

It seems that Singer was connected.

One wonders for how long his scam has been running.

.
 
A 2018 phone conversation between Singer and John B. Wilson, a Massachusetts financier, recently emerged that sheds some new light on what went on.

At the time, Wilson was inquiring about how he could get his twin daughters into a university. To this, Singer responded that it would take no less than $45 million in donations to obtain admission to either Harvard or Stanford.

However, he revealed there was an alternative, which he called the "side door." For $1.2 million, he could make the arrangements. Following the steep price, Wilson asked what $300,000 could get. "That's, uh, Georgetown, Boston College, Georgia Tech, USC, UCLA, Berkeley," Singer replied.

The release of the transcript, prosecutors allege, helps their case as it shows Singer conspiring with wealthy parents.

New phone transcripts offer detailed look at how Rick Singer worked

College Admissions Scandal Update: Recorded Phone Call Reveals New Details About Scam

Doesn’t it make you angry? So I can’t believe that Stanford couldn’t have used 1.5 mln donation. And I don’t believe that official donation to Harvard to gain admission is 45 mln.

Here is what Singer’s activity was leading up to:

- siphoning money off Universities
- via inflated SAT and ACT scores - make no mistake - these kids were competing with other kids, who got high scores by hard work.
- via athletic program, these privileged kids were competing with real athletes, who probably were pushed back, too

So who profited? Only people involved in the scam.
 
Doesn’t it make you angry? So I can’t believe that Stanford couldn’t have used 1.5 mln donation. And I don’t believe that official donation to Harvard to gain admission is 45 mln.

Here is what Singer’s activity was leading up to:

- siphoning money off Universities
- via inflated SAT and ACT scores - make no mistake - these kids were competing with other kids, who got high scores by hard work.
- via athletic program, these privileged kids were competing with real athletes, who probably were pushed back, too

So who profited? Only people involved in the scam.

Yeah, I could wind up with egg on my face about this one, but I have humongous doubts that there is any such thing as an "official" donation level. I think this was part of Singer's shtick, in an effort to make people believe there could be anything "official" about this plan. Why would anyone codify the monetary amount? Is this down in any school's application materials (lol)? I feel pretty sure the school materials would say something like a bland "contact the administrative office to inquire about funding/sponsorship opportunities"; and that it wouldn't be anywhere near the section on admissions. I mean, avoiding accusations of favoritism and buy-your-way-ism is the whole point of this scandal.
 
Why did these actors/actresses/others need to get in cahoots with some shady organizations, unknown names, if they could be the official donors to the schools?

In other words, why, instead of going the prestigious donors’ way, the celebrities chose the illegal, shady one?
My guess is that some did not have the cash for the "donor route". In addition, the donor road may not come with guarantees.

Rather, the admission of a prospective student will be uhmm.... "considered" following an "acceptable" donation. Even what is considered an acceptable donation is probably vague and varies depending on who is making it.

Meanwhile, compared to the winding and foggy "donor road", the "athlete road" road is a straight, high speed expressway:

- Pay the very clearly stated amount of "X" and your son or daughter is guaranteed to become an admitted "athlete" at school "S".

And..... You don't need to suffer through benefactor cocktail receptions hoping to have a private moment with a certain administrator- only get a vague amount on the "recommended" donation and an even vaguer "maybe" as to admission.
 
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Yeah, I could wind up with egg on my face about this one, but I have humongous doubts that there is any such thing as an "official" donation level. I think this was part of Singer's shtick, in an effort to make people believe there could be anything "official" about this plan. Why would anyone codify the monetary amount? Is this down in any school's application materials (lol)? I feel pretty sure the school materials would say something like a bland "contact the administrative office to inquire about funding/sponsorship opportunities"; and that it wouldn't be anywhere near the section on admissions. I mean, avoiding accusations of favoritism and buy-your-way-ism is the whole point of this scandal.

Another ironic part of the conversation - if there might be anything ironic in it - is that Singer, apparently, steers the twin’s father away from places where he may have fewer, or no, contracts (Harvard is expensive, and “only weird people go to MIT” (as if!) ) in favor of the places where he has stronger ones. Eventually, he got a “value package” for the father, two twins for 1.5 mln, in installments.

This conversation itself is read like a comedy, but the kids with “bought” admission are supposed to become our thinking elite. Scary.
 
Wow! Unreal. Idiots.

The email, made public by federal prosecutors, detailed a conversation Giannulli appeared to have with had with a USC official in September 2016.

The official offered to look at Bella Rose's application to USC but was allegedly told by Giannulli: 'I think we are squared away.'

'The nicest I've been about blowing off somebody,' Giannulli, 56, allegedly wrote in an email to his wife, according to the documents prosecutors filed in Boston federal court after declining the help of the USC administrator.
 
Wow! Unreal. Idiots.

The email, made public by federal prosecutors, detailed a conversation Giannulli appeared to have with had with a USC official in September 2016.

The official offered to look at Bella Rose's application to USC but was allegedly told by Giannulli: 'I think we are squared away.'

'The nicest I've been about blowing off somebody,' Giannulli, 56, allegedly wrote in an email to his wife, according to the documents prosecutors filed in Boston federal court after declining the help of the USC administrator.
Legitimate? Call me cynical but, evidently, the alternate road involved having close contacts with a school official who then offered to uhmmm…. “Personally review” (cough, cough) his daughter’s admissions paperwork

I doubt school officials make such promises to just any parent. Likewise, the fact that the school official was turned down curtly does not suggest that friendship served as the basis for the “personal review”

Rather, my guess is that the school official was responding to the possibility of a donation to the school- or equally possible, a “donation” to his own bank account in the form of a competing bribe offer.

In short, the article and prosecutor might be using the word “legitimate” pretty broadly. Maybe... Legitimate adj. : If there was no clearly stated bribe, then the admittance would have been “legitimate”
 
"Send me a 50k check": College admissions scam emails released

an email from Singer to Giannulli that said: "Mossimo — Can you send me a 50k check to USC… Additionally the rest of the 200k will be paid to our foundation."

The prosecution also released an email forwarded to Giannulli with payment instructions to Donna Heinel, the Senior Women's Associate Athletic Director at USC, who was also charged in the admissions scandal. Heinel reported that Loughlin's younger daughter rowed for a "competitive" club and USC's coach "thinks she has talent."

Another document stated the children of Loughlin and Giannulli were flagged by their high school counselors who said they knew the two were not on the crew team. The school "doesn't think either of the students are serious crew participants," a USC employee wrote in an email.
 


Jan. 16, 2020
3:17 PM

Lori Loughlin told Rick Singer her daughters 'love USC' months before arrest in admissions scandal
“I’m good, Rick,” Lori Loughlin said. “How are you?”
“Good. The girls good?”
“They’re really good,” she said. “They love USC. They’re really happy.”

“So we — so we just — so we just have to say we made a donation to your foundation,” Loughlin asked, “and that’s it, end of story?”
“That is correct.” He wanted to give her a heads up, he explained, in case the IRS called.

“Ok, yeah. Ok. Totally. All right. So, so that’s it. So it’s — it’s the IRS. It’s not anyone from USC, it’s the IRS.”
“That is correct.”

Jan. 15, 2020
3:29 PM

USC questioned whether Lori Loughlin's daughters were really athletes a year before admissions scandal

"Three years later, Heinel was asked to investigate applications submitted by three students, one of them Giannulli’s younger daughter. Notified the student had been flagged as a rowing recruit, her high school counselor had told a USC admissions officer a year earlier, “I had no knowledge of [her] involvement in crew and based on what I knew of her doubted she was involved in crew,” according to a record of the conversation that prosecutors filed in court."

Yet Heinel said:
Donna Heinel, the third-ranking administrator in USC’s athletic department, was asked to investigate. She reported back the next day: Loughlin’s younger daughter rowed for a “competitive” club and USC’s coach “thinks she has talent,” she wrote.
 
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These people are extreme narcissists. They view their children as extensions of themselves, and to feed their narcissism, their children must be appear perfect, the best and the brightest.

They don't even realize how much they damaged their children, with the implications that they are not good enough, unless they attend USC, or whatever prestigious university.
 
USC questioned whether Lori Loughlin's daughters were really athletes a year before admissions scandal

With the fashion designer’s older daughter applying in 2016, the official, whose name is redacted in the documents, offered to “flag” her application and asked “if I can be at all helpful in setting up a 1:1 opportunity for her, customized tour of campus for the family, and/or classroom visit

Singer asked Giannulli in an email for “a picture with her on an ERG [rowing machine] in workout clothes like a real athlete.”

Six days before the USC official’s email, Giannulli fielded one from Singer: “Got it all. Profile is being made as a coxswain and USC is awaiting my packet with the transcript, test scores and profile.”

Giannulli told the development official: “Thanks so much, I think we are squared away.” He forwarded the email thread to his wife that night, adding, “The nicest I’ve been at blowing off somebody.”

A month later, Heinel presented their daughter as a recruited coxswain to a USC admissions committee, which approved the girl for admission “based on falsified athletic credentials,” prosecutors allege. The couple wrote a $50,000 check to a USC account that Heinel controlled and wired Singer $200,000.

They repeated the fraud a year later to get their younger daughter into USC, according to prosecutors.
 
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These people are extreme narcissists. They view their children as extensions of themselves, and to feed their narcissism, their children must be appear perfect, the best and the brightest.

They don't even realize how much they damaged their children, with the implications that they are not good enough, unless they attend USC, or whatever prestigious university.

Maybe not that simple. Like all of us, these parents love their kids. Many of them did not have such opportunities in their lives. They all, I honestly believe it, worked very hard for their money. So hard that they are lacking one thing for their kids, and it is time. So they compensate by the money.

And maybe they are telling themselves that they are working so hard to make their kids’ lives easier. And like most of us, they might be lacking criticism in regards to their kids, think that the kids are prettier, smarter, more talented than they really are.

As to why they push kids to universities...you know, there are these articles about “highest IQ among celebrities”. They constantly remind us that Madonna, Cindy Crawford, or Lady Gaga are gifted, that Natalie Portman, Conan O’Brien and Matt Damon went to Harvard and Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton. These parents model their kids’ lives from the best models in their world, probably.

Or maybe they constantly felt lack of formal education and knowledge themselves?
 
Maybe not that simple. Like all of us, these parents love their kids. Many of them did not have such opportunities in their lives. They all, I honestly believe it, worked very hard for their money. So hard that they are lacking one thing for their kids, and it is time. So they compensate by the money.

And maybe they are telling themselves that they are working so hard to make their kids’ lives easier. And like most of us, they might be lacking criticism in regards to their kids, think that the kids are prettier, smarter, more talented than they really are.

As to why they push kids to universities...you know, there are these articles about “highest IQ among celebrities”. They constantly remind us that Madonna, Cindy Crawford, or Lady Gaga are gifted, that Natalie Portman, Conan O’Brien and Matt Damon went to Harvard and Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton. These parents model their kids’ lives from the best models in their world, probably.

Or maybe they constantly felt lack of formal education and knowledge themselves?
Maybe. I’m sure these parents rationalized it to themselves in a similar way. But in the end it’s still cheating and a crime. They still chose to steal other kids’ opportunities for their own children. It’s not a victimless crime and they know that and did it anyway.
 
Maybe. I’m sure these parents rationalized it to themselves in a similar way. But in the end it’s still cheating and a crime. They still chose to steal other kids’ opportunities for their own children. It’s not a victimless crime and they know that and did it anyway.

These are different things we are discussing. The cheating system, the plagiarism, blatantly using others’ positions is horrible. I merely say that wanting their kids to go to prestigious colleges is not narcissism. It is the syndrome coming with the money and the lack of time, but it is not narcissism. Rather, the parents want their kids to be successful, and be connected through the sororities and fraternities systems, and for this they are planning to, essentially, buy their diplomas.

I think we should look at the problem in general, broader.

I honestly, don’t even quite understand the athletes quotas. If there are good athletes, why not make a separate College for Physical Education for them, so when they do retire, they could be trainers, announcers, anchormen? Musicians go to colleges for music, right?

If they want to be the best at business, they should study business for all these years, not competitively row.

I want to find out, whether in Japan, China or Singapore, countries with good education, there are athletes’ quotas? Not that I mind them, I wonder if this pathway is good to raise future specialists.
 
Maybe not that simple. Like all of us, these parents love their kids. Many of them did not have such opportunities in their lives. They all, I honestly believe it, worked very hard for their money. So hard that they are lacking one thing for their kids, and it is time. So they compensate by the money.

And maybe they are telling themselves that they are working so hard to make their kids’ lives easier. And like most of us, they might be lacking criticism in regards to their kids, think that the kids are prettier, smarter, more talented than they really are.

As to why they push kids to universities...you know, there are these articles about “highest IQ among celebrities”. They constantly remind us that Madonna, Cindy Crawford, or Lady Gaga are gifted, that Natalie Portman, Conan O’Brien and Matt Damon went to Harvard and Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton. These parents model their kids’ lives from the best models in their world, probably.

Or maybe they constantly felt lack of formal education and knowledge themselves?

Puzzling, because putting their children in a rigorous, highly competitive academic environment, when their children are obviously not ready just sets them up for failure. Although, I guess that the parents are set up to just pay and bribe their children all the way through USC.

Of course, Mossimo went to USC as well, and dropped out.

If it is an issue of "higher education", their daughters could have easily been accepted on their own merit by a myriad of state universities, that don't have the same cachet as USC. But, then, they would have been rubbing shoulders with the great unwashed, regular folks.
 
Puzzling, because putting their children in a rigorous, highly competitive academic environment, when their children are obviously not ready just sets them up for failure. Although, I guess that the parents are set up to just pay and bribe their children all the way through USC.

Of course, Mossimo went to USC as well, and dropped out.

If it is an issue of "higher education", their daughters could have easily been accepted on their own merit by a myriad of state universities, that don't have the same cachet as USC. But, then, they would have been rubbing shoulders with the great unwashed, regular folks.

I think they were prepared to pay through the colleges.

And it is not about unwashed folks. I think it is about future elitist connections through the sororities and fraternities, maybe future husbands and wives pool, as well as what is in their resumes.
 
Puzzling, because putting their children in a rigorous, highly competitive academic environment, when their children are obviously not ready just sets them up for failure.

Although, I guess that the parents are set up to just pay and bribe their children all the way through USC.
A good number of the children benefiting from bribes were able to compete to varying degrees in those academic environments.

Some were doing very well (the father of a Georgetown "athlete" who sued after they initially would not issue a transcript pointed out that his daughter was academically out performing a good number of those admitted via uhmm..... "regular means"). Others had acceptable, but not noteworthy grades.

At the end of the day, there are more qualified students than certain schools have the ability to admit. Thus, being turned down does not mean academically unqualified.
 
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