to start the ball rolling.. Wall street journal Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin charged in US college admissions bribery fraud Play VideoPlay Mute 0:00 / 1:33 Fullscreen Hollywood stars, wealthy parents arrested, charged over college bribery scam US actress Felicity Huffman (left) and actress Lori Loughlin, right, are among 50 people indicted in a nationwide university admissions scam. US actress Felicity Huffman (left) and actress Lori Loughlin, right, are among 50 people indicted in a nationwide university admissions scam. By MELISSA KORN S US federal prosecutors charged dozens of wealthy parents, including prominent figures in law and business and two Hollywood actresses, with bribing college coaches and testing administrators to get students admitted to elite colleges under false pretences. Actresses Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives and Lori Loughlin from Full House, were among 50 charged, accused in the alleged scheme for funnelling at least $US25 million through a fraudulent college-counselling service to get their children into colleges including Georgetown University, Yale University, Stanford University and University of California Los Angeles. While it appeared the universities themselves weren’t involved in the scheme, federal authorities claim it is the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the US Justice Department. Huffman, 56, will be released after posting a $US250,000 bond. Loughlin, 54, has not yet been arrested but her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, will need to post a $US1 million bond to secure his release. R Prosecutors said the operation involved paying admissions-test administrators to help the students raise their test scores, by either having someone else take the test, or correcting their answers before they were submitted. Prosecutors also said some of the people conspired to bribe varsity coaches and administrators at elite campuses to admit their children as recruited athletes. Joseph Bonavolonta, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Boston field office, said that those charged established a “culture of corruption and greed that created an uneven playing field for students trying to get into these schools the right way, through hard work, good grades and community service.” The admissions consultant, William Singer, pleaded guilty to racketeering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice on Tuesday afternoon. He allegedly facilitated the fraud through Newport Beach, California-based the Edge College and Career Network LLC. Mr Singer’s lawyer Donald Heller told reporters the consultant was “remorseful and contrite and wants to move on with his life.” Coaches and at least one administrator participated, prosecutors said. The former head men’s and women’s tennis coach at Georgetown, a senior associate athletic director, water polo and women’s soccer coaches at the University of Southern California, the men’s soccer coach at UCLA and the Wake Forest University women’s volleyball coach were all charged with racketeering. The head sailing coach at Stanford University also pleaded guilty to racketeering Tuesday afternoon. Since the indictment was filed Tuesday morning, Stanford fired Mr Vandemoer, UCLA placed its men’s head soccer coach on leave, Wake Forest put its head volleyball coach on administrative leave and retained outside counsel, USC announced an internal investigation and a broad review of its admissions processes, and the University of Texas in Austin placed its men’s tennis coach on administrative leave. Yale said would continue to co-operate with the investigation. Prosecutors said the head women’s soccer coach at Yale accepted a $US400,000 bribe in exchange for admitting a candidate as a recruited athlete. The student didn’t even play competitive soccer, according to prosecutors. After the student was admitted, her parents paid a college admissions consultant $US1.2 million. Officials said the parents spared no expense, with US lawyer Andrew Lelling saying they paid Mr Singer, the consultant, “donations” of between $US200,000 and $US6.5 million for his services, with the most common payment between $US200,000 and $US400,000. Felicity Huffman, left, and William H. Macy arrive at the 70th Prime time Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. Felicity Huffman, left, and William H. Macy arrive at the 70th Prime time Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. While courting parents to join the scheme, Mr Singer allegedly addressed the reality that elite college admissions isn’t just a matter of merit, but said other avenues to securing an acceptance letter could be more expensive and weren’t a sure thing. “There is a front door which means you get in on your own. The back door is through institutional advancement, which is ten times as much money. And I’ve created this side door in,” he said in a June 2018 phone call with Gordon Caplan, co-chairman of New York law firm Willkie Farr, according to a transcript of the recorded call included in court documents. Mr Caplan allegedly paid Mr Singer $US75,000 to have another person take the ACT for his daughter in December, asking that she get a score in the low 30s out of a possible 36. Mr Caplan said in another recorded call in July, “I’m not worried about the moral issue here. I’m worried about the, if she’scaught doing that, you know, she’s finished.” Mr Caplan couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Mr Singer also allegedly helped parents work with coaches to claim admission spots reserved for recruited athletes, staging photos of the teens playing sports or photoshopping images of the teens’ faces onto stock photos of young athletes. The coaches who allegedly received payments then used the athletic profiles to persuade others at the schools to admit the students, Mr Lelling said. Play VideoPlay Mute 0:00 / 2:13 Fullscreen U.S. Attorney Details Sprawling College Admissions Cheating Scheme Mr Singer had long time personal connections to coaches and was good at “calibrating fake credentials to appear realistic but not so good” they would invite scrutiny, Mr Lelling said. Mr. Lelling said most of the coaches both gave money to their sports programs and kept some for themselves. Lori Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli also had a paid partnership with Amazon Primestudent where she boasted on Instagram about moving into her university dorm. According to court records, during the summer of 2017 and the following May, Mr Vandemoer, the Stanford head sailing coach, agreed to designate two of Mr Singer’s clients as recruits in return for payments, including one of $US500,000, to the Stanford sailing program. Neither student ended up going to Stanford, but Mr Singer still allegedly paid $US160,000 to the sailing program, according to prosecutors. Mr Vandemoer agreed with Mr Singer that the payment “would serve as a ‘deposit’ for a future student’s purported recruitment,” the federal documents allege. In a statement Tuesday, Stanford said Mr Vandemoer has been terminated. “Neither student came to Stanford,” the statement said. “However, the alleged behaviour runs completely counter to Stanford’s values.” The school said it has been cooperating with the investigation. Prosecutors alleged that charitable organisations were used as fronts for bribes. Parents made the payments in the form of donations to Mr Singer’s non-profit organisation, Key Worldwide Foundation, prosecutors aid. Greg Abbott, CEO of International Dispensing Co., and his wife, Marcia, were both charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Mr. Abbott said his family had spoken to the FBI about the alleged cheating scandal, and on Tuesday called the situation “insane.” According to an affidavit filed in the case, Mr Abbott allegedly made a $50,000 donation to Mr. Singer’s charity last April in exchange for having someone correct their daughter’s answers after she finished taking the ACT. Prosecutors said the money was wired from an Abbott family Foundation brokerage account. Another donation, this time for $75,000, was made in September, allegedly in exchange for helping the daughter cheat on SAT mathematics and literature subject tests. “Literally, we were involved with this guy for our daughter to help out with college counselling and he gets f — arrested,” he said. “We didn’t know he was doing this s —.” Mr Abbott said the counselling service had a “sketchy set up” in hindsight but had been recommended to the family. “A network of New York City mothers use this guy and they all say he’s the best,” he said. “He ruined chances of kids getting into school who did years and years of work to get into school on their own.” Also charged was Bill McGlashan, founder and managing partner of TPG Growth, the arm of the private-equity firm that invests in fast-growing companies, including Airbnb Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. TPG did not immediately return a call seeking comment. With Jennifer Levitz, Douglas Belkin, Erin Ailworth, Brian Costa, Jim Oberman, Melanie Grayce West and Miriam Gottfried. The Wall Street Journal
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...chief-erik-solheim-resigns-flying-revelations N environment chief resigns after frequent flying revelations Erik Solheim quits after Guardian reveals excess travel and rule breaking which led to withholding of funds Damian Carrington Environment editor @dpcarrington Tue 20 Nov 2018 17.56 GMT First published on Tue 20 Nov 2018 17.22 GMT The audit found Erik Solheim spent almost $500,000 on air travel and hotels in just 22 months. P The UN’s environment chief, Erik Solheim, has resigned following severe criticism of his global travels and internal rule-breaking which led some nations to withhold their funding. The Guardian understands Solheim was asked to resign by the UN secretary general, António Guterres. Sources at the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said that countries unhappy with Solheim’s conduct were holding back tens of millions of dollars, threatening a financial crisis at the body. A draft internal UN audit leaked to the Guardian in September found Solheim had spent almost $500,000 (£390,000) on air travel and hotels in just 22 months, and was away 80% of the time. The audit said this was a “reputation risk” for an organisation dedicated to fighting climate change. A UN staff union leader called some of the revelations “mind-blowing” and a prominent climate scientist accused Solheim of “obscene CO2 hypocrisy”. The audit said Solheim had “no regard for abiding by the set regulations and rules” and had failed to account properly for some of his travel. He also unofficially allowed chosen staff to work from Europe rather than at Unep headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Solheim told the Guardian he had already paid back money for instances of oversight and made changes where other rules had been broken. On Tuesday, the UN secretary general’s official spokesman said Guterres had accepted Solheim’s resignation. “The secretary general is grateful for Mr Solheim’s service and recognises he has been a leading voice in drawing the world’s attention to critical environmental challenges.” The final version of the internal audit report has yet to be made public, but the spokesman said: “The secretary general is pleased to see that Unep is committed to implementing the recommendations that are found [in the report].” Unep’s deputy executive director, Joyce Msuya, has been appointed acting head while a replacement is sought. The Guardian had also revealed that Solheim had to recuse himself in September from professional dealings with his own wife and a Norwegian company that employed her shortly after it signed a deal with Unep in April. The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden are among the countries that publicly said they were halting funding for Unep until the issues around Solheim were resolved. The total sum at stake is in the region of $50m, according to sources. Some staff at Unep have been deeply unhappy with Solheim’s leadership for a long time. At a meeting between Solheim and staff in Nairobi in September, of which the Guardian has seen a recording, Tim Christophersen, the head of the freshwater, land and climate branch at Unep, said: “Some of the work in my branch basically has hit a bit of a wall, because the donors we speak with are freezing their contributions to the environment fund. “None of us individually is more important than the UN,” Christophersen told Solheim. “What should not happen in this organisation is that people are allowed to put their personal agenda ahead of the organisation, whether this is where you prefer to live, how you prefer to travel.” Numerous Unep staff have contacted the Guardian criticising Solheim’s perceived closeness to China and the project he initiated related to the environmental sustainability of China’s huge infrastructure Belt and Road Initiative. The US in particular was concerned and its representatives raised a long list of questions as far back as April, including about how the project was funded and how intellectual property rights would be protected. Another concern to staff was the $500,000 sponsorship Solheim agreed to give the Volvo Ocean Race, despite it not being mentioned on the VOR sponsors’ web page or announced by Unep. Solheim emailed staff on Tuesday and said: “I wanted UN Environment to be a lead agency for reform, even if it raised some questions. Doing things differently is never easy and I will depart knowing I never spared a moment in my effort to implement this vision and leave UN Environment more capable and more impactful.” One senior employee welcomed Solheim’s resignation: “It will let us get on with the job we have to do, which is a big one. This was getting in the way.” The crisis had prompted Solheim to lead a three-day retreat last week with senior directors. He emailed staff on Monday: “We agreed on and committed to a set of principles [to] guide the way we work and interact with each other.” But on Tuesday, he was gone. We made a choice…
Democratic Donors Charged in College Admissions Scam SHARE TWEET EMAIL The Yale Bulldogs mascotThe Yale Bulldogs mascot / Getty Images BY: Mikhael Smits March 12, 2019 3:13 pm Several Democratic donors were among those charged Tuesday in a federal crackdown on a nationwide fraudulent college admissions conspiracy. "Dozens of individuals involved in a nationwide conspiracy that facilitated cheating on college entrance exams and the admission of students to elite universities as purported athletic recruits," according to the Department of Justice. Documents unsealed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts show fraud extending to Yale, Georgetown, and other American universities. Parents paid William Rick Singer, owner of The Edge College & Career Network, LLC, to ensure their children's admissions to university, according to court documents. Singer would then arrange for special proctors to fly from Texas and California for the SAT and ACT tests, correcting students' answers, according to the court filing. He's also accused of creating fake athletic profiles for students, even though some did not play sports at all. Singer then bribed coaches and administrators of NCAA Division I programs like Yale, Stanford, and the University of Southern California to recruit the students, all but guaranteeing their admission, according to the DOJ. Those charged represent a "catalog of wealth and privilege," U.S. attorney Andrew Lelling told reporters Tuesday. "The real victims in this case are the hardworking students" who were denied admissions because the children of wealthy parents "simply bought their way in," according to Lelling. The 33 parents paid a total of $25 million to Singer's company as part of the scheme, ABC News reported. Also implicated were top college coaches for their alleged role in accepting millions of dollars to help admit students. Most of the press reaction Tuesday centered on Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, two prominent Hollywood stars charged in the sting. Huffman, when not acting, is a generous donor to Democratic candidates. Huffman has donated thousands of dollars since 2016 to Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.), according to the Federal Election Commission's site. Prior to that, she donated frequently to President Barack Obama's election efforts. She is far from the only Democratic donor on the list, some of whom have also donated to Republican candidates at times. Gordon Caplan is co-chairman of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, a major law firm. He lives in Greenwich, Connecticut and New York City. Caplan paid $125,000 to have his daughter's ACT exam corrected by the proctor, according to the DOJ. He is charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud in the District of Connecticut. During a conversation recorded by investigators, Caplan asked how the scheme would work. A cooperating witness explained over the phone: I just explained it to you. You get extended time, you gotta get the extended time first. Then you’re going to fly to L.A. And you’re going to be going on a fake recruiting visit. You’ll visit some schools, while you’re out here in L.A. And then on a Saturday, which is the national test day if it’s ACT or SAT, she’s going to sit down and take the test. I will have a proctor in the room, that’s why, when you have 100% extended time, you have– you get to take it at a– you don’t take it with everybody else, you get to take it over multiple days. And you get to take it at a– you can take it at your school or another school. Okay? And then this kid, ’cause she’s taking online classes, you have to go somewhere anyway.9 So you come to my school, take the test on a Saturday. She’ll be in the room for six, six and a half hours taking this test. My proctor would then answer her questions, and by the end of the day, she would leave, and my proctor would make sure she would gets a score that would be equivalent to the number that we need to get. […] That’s how simple it is. She doesn’t know. Nobody knows what happens. It happened, she feels great about herself. She got a test a score, and now you’re actually capable for help getting into a school. Because the test score’s no longer an issue. Does that make sense? Caplan gave the maximum allowable donation to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. He donated an additional $25,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and $22,300 to the Democratic National Committee in 2016, months before Clinton lost to Donald Trump. Caplan began giving to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) in 2005. During the 2018 midterms, Caplan shelled out thousands of dollars to support Democratic candidates in Connecticut, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada. His lavish political spending used to be bipartisan. In 2011 and 2012, he gave tens of thousands of dollars to both Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns. Robert Flaxman, the owner of Crown Realty and Development, was also charged. The Beverly Hills, California resident paid for assistance with both his son and daughter's admissions, according to the DOJ. For a fee of $250,000, the fraudulent college consultant had ACT tests falsified and arranged for a varsity coach at the University of San Diego to claim Flaxman's son as an athlete, according to the charges. During the 2016 election cycle, Flaxman donated to Clinton's campaign and gave thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party in states including Colorado, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. He also donated to several Republicans, albeit on a far less frequent basis. Several years earlier, in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, he also spent upwards of $125,000 supporting Republicans. Agustin Huneeus is a winemaker in California. He paid $50,000 to administer a false SAT test to his daughter, according to investigators. He is also accused of conspiring to bribe USC athletic staff to accept his daughter as a water polo recruit. During the 2016 cycle, Huneeus gave $33,400 to Clinton's super PAC. He's given over $150,000 the DNC and DCCC, $60,000 the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund, $10,000 to Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) and thousands more to various other California candidates. Jane Buckingham is the founder and president of Trendera, a boutique marketing firm. She agreed to pay $50,000 for her son to take a false ACT test in Houston, according to investigators. At the test site, a co-conspirator faked her son's handwriting and took the test for him, investigators say. Buckingham's son received a 35 out of a maximum 36 points. She later expressed interest in arranging the same for her younger daughter, according to the charges. Buckingham is also a generous donor to the Democratic Party. She gave $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund and $30,800 to the DNC in 2012. She gave more than $22,000 to support Gillibrand's races. Of the 50 people charged in the college scandal, the Washington Free Beacon found only one gave consistently to Republican candidates. Mossimo G. Giannulli, founder of the clothing company Mossimo, Inc., is married to actress Lori Loughlin. He and his wife gave over $500,000 to secure admission to USC for his two daughters via the crew team. Neither daughter rows. He supported Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) in 2016, and Romney and John Boehner before that. He has also donated to Democrats. The scandal comes at a pivotal moment for admissions policies nationwide. A Massachusetts district federal court is currently determining whether Harvard University's admissions policy of affirmative action unfairly discriminates on account of race. Though the legality of athletic recruitment is not at issue in the latter case, both threaten to pull back the curtain on the secretive process of admissions at America's most selective institutions
Lets just be honest and admit that the elitist class of all political stripes have been playing this game for quite some time. Post secondary education is about the money first and foremost, with political indoctrination running not too far behind. Other than that it's a four year party time. The entire system is a scam.
I got into college without doctoring transcripts, faking extra cuticular activities and taking my own SATs... AMA.
Yes let's be honest and admit "the left prefer to do as i say and not as i do". Most are from left California and Hollywood. The right would admit they would do whatever it is with in their means to ensure their children get the best.