Prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of not more than four years, and Gordon Ernst has agreed to not ask for less than a year behind bars.
A former Georgetown University tennis coach accused of accepting more than $2 million in bribes will plead guilty in the college admissions scandal case and has agreed to serve time as part of a plea deal. Gordon Ernst has agreed to plead guilty to charges including conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, court documents filed Wednesday show. In the plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend a sentence of no more than four years in prison, and Ernst has promised to ask for no less than a year. Ernst’s agreement to plead guilty comes as the first trial in the nationwide college admissions scandal involving wealthy parents and athletic coaches is being held in Boston’s federal court. He was scheduled to go on trial in November. For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below. Ernst, who was the head men and women’s tennis coach at Georgetown, was arrested in March 2019 along with more than four dozen others in the so-called “Operation Varsity Blues” case that revealed a scheme to get undeserving kids into elite universities with rigged test scores or bogus athletic credentials.
