The ruse was oddly simple. Since college coaches can often recommend more athletes to the admissions department than a team needs, why not buy a…
The ruse was oddly simple.
Since college coaches can often recommend more athletes to the admissions department than a team needs, why not buy a few slots from the coaches and sell them to parents desperate to get their children into the most selective universities?
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about William Singer’s scheme was how easily he could have been found out. With a handful of keystrokes, or maybe a phone call, admissions officers could have discovered that applicants were simply posing as athletes.
Then it might have been discovered that a purported pole vaulter had probably never touched a pole, that a long snapper had stopped playing football, that a supposedly fast swimmer wasn’t fast at all. Indeed, the doctored photographs used to support claims of athletic ability are pretty unconvincing.
Yet as simple as it would have been to uncover the plot, the scheme lasted at least seven years, according to the federal indictment detailing the fraud led by Singer.
Singer pleaded guilty to racketeering and other charges Tuesday, when documents from the case were made public. Among other things, those documents provided information on the applications of the following students:
The basketball ‘all-star’
Gamal Abdelaziz, a resident of Las Vegas and a former casino executive, stands accused of bribing Donna Heinel, the University of Southern California associate athletic director, to designate his daughter as a recruit for the USC basketball team.
To make that happen, ‘s daughter needed to be portrayed as a standout basketball player. Singer is said to have enlisted an assistant soccer coach at USC named Laura Janke to create a profile of a girl who starred for a high school team in Asia, garnering such honors as “Asia Pacific Activities Conference All Star Team,” “2016 China Cup Champions,” “Hong Kong Academy team MVP” and “team captain.”
During a phone call in January, according to the documents, Singer told that the admissions office had asked Heinel why ‘s daughter did not end up on the basketball team.
