Thirty-three parents were charged in the case. Also implicated were top college coaches, who were accused of accepting millions of dollars to help admit students to Wake Forest, Yale, Stanford, the University of Southern California and other schools, regardless of their academic or sports ability, officials said.
Along with Hollywood stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, those charged included prominent business leaders, a fashion designer and a top lawyer, as well as exam administrators accused of manufacturing students’ achievements and private admissions counselors accused of coordinating it all, officials said.
It was the Justice Department’s largest-ever college admissions prosecution, a sprawling investigation that involved 200 agents nationwide and resulted in charges against 50 people in six states.
The charges also underscored how college admissions have become so cutthroat and competitive that some have sought to break the rules. Authorities say the parents of some of the nation’s wealthiest and most privileged students sought to buy spots for their children at top universities, not only cheating the system but also potentially cheating other hardworking students out of a chance at a college education.
“The parents are the prime movers of this fraud,” Andrew E. Lelling, U.S. attorney for the district of Massachusetts, said Tuesday during a news conference. Lelling said those parents used their wealth to create a separate and unfair admissions process for their children.
At the center of the sweeping financial crime and fraud case was William Rick Singer, founder of a college preparatory business called the Edge College & Career Network, also known as The Key.
Authorities said Singer, who has agreed to plead guilty to the charges and cooperated with federal prosecutors, used The Key and its nonprofit arm, Key Worldwide Foundation, which is based in Newport Beach, California, to help students cheat on their standardized tests and to pay bribes to the coaches who could get them into college with fake athletic credentials.
Lelling said Huffman participated in the SAT cheating portion of the scam.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.