Largest college admissions cheating bust

Reward them? Have you seen the charges? There’s racketeering and wire fraud on that list as well as a ton other charges. I don’t think these people are just going to walk away from this, and that’s minus the PR hit they’re going to and are taking. I don’t think any amount of fat suit dancing is going to make the public forget what they did any time soon.

What sort of punishment do you really think Lori Loughlin or Felicia Huffman are actually going to get? Jail time? No way are they serving time - they’ll pay a fine and skate by, like the majority of white collar criminals before them. I’d be shocked if anything actually comes of this, prison-wise.

I could be setting myself up for massive disappointment, but I get the feeling this group just set themselves up to be examples. They’ve been wording it pretty carefully. This isn’t some local police stunt. They went out of their way to get this ring and make it as public as possible.

The real victims here will never be identified or get any compensation – all the families who worked hard and played by the rules but got bumped out of a spot at their choice school by rich and unethical families. There is no reason to NOT cheat, if you end up better off even if you are caught and have consequences applied.

Well it wouldn’t be hard to find out what years are affected…

This happens because admissions are so mysterious and sometimes subjective. If there was any transparency at all schemes like this could have been seen sooner. Then again, even with that we start entering into admission wars about who deserves what and why.

Are we really sure there’s only one ring? Every school should be, if they’re not already, checking their processes right now.

If (I get that it is a big if at this point) the parents, coaches, etc. get hit hard, how do you come to the conclusion that they are better off? Are you isolating that evaluation to just the students? If these parents and others get sent to jail, there’s a massive deterrence effect, there.

If the justice system fails to properly punish those who are proven to have committed bad acts, that’s a failing of the justice system. That won’t be solved by the unrealistic (from a practical standpoint) of expelling all the students caught up in this, including those who didn’t knowingly participate.

On the legal department issue, while this isn’t may area of law, I’m 99% certain the schools will not take on the legal liability that would be involved in blanket expulsions. It just won’t happen.

I think I read somewhere that UC Irvine was actually one of the harder schools in California to get into. A southern California school so that fits with what you wrote.

I’ve worked in LA for 22 years and nobody seemed to give much of a toss that I had a degree from USC. It did open one door for me, an unpaid internship at a production company where the story editor had been a classmate of mine. But beyond that, not much “prestige” that I could detect. I don’t think it carries an aura anything like the Ivy League, whether deserved or not.

The professional/grad schools might be a different story. If you’re an L.A. lawyer, I would guess that USC Law is probably a good thing to have on your resume (beats the heck out of a lot of other SoCal law schools, though Loyola is also very respectable, and of course UCLA).

Those bastards!

It’s almost as bad as being a baby boomer. :)

This. Just look at Lori Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade or whatever she’s calling herself. It blindingly obvious from her social media that she has no interest in college for the education, experience and contacts that most kids would rely on to succeed post-graduation. She’s there because her parents thought it was important that she “go to college”, and she’s skating by on minimal effort while partying hard and keeping up her social media influencer gig. She has no intention of ever using a degree from USC for anything other than show, because she knows she will inherit shittons of money, probably have a lucrative modeling/influencer career for some time to come, and likely marry someone with even more money and power than her parents. Getting kicked out of USC wouldn’t be a punishment for her, it would probably make her happy as she’d have more time to travel, party and post to Instagram.

I don’t see Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman or any of the other parents doing any jail time or even probation out of this either. Hefty fines (which aren’t hefty to them), public embarrassment and possibly some community service are all that they will receive because PRIVILLAGE. The guy who ran the company providing the services will likely go to federal prison for a long time, and all his assistants/employees, the coaches, school administrators and test proctors/stand-ins will likely be ruined by the whole thing as well, because they’re common people without the means to influence prosecutors and judges.

This is America. The ONLY way rich people go to prison or face real consequences is when their victims are other rich people.

While I haven’t read about this extensively, what laws specifically would they have broken? Probably wire fraud, maybe tax fraud if they claimed the bribes as charitable donations?, and maybe something for bribing a government employee, if public schools were involved. Is bribing a private individual at a private institution illegal per se?

Just as this thread is exploding today, so is public opinion against not just the parents, but the students that were allowed to take advantage here.

I still think both should be judged harshly, but I guess we will see soon enough what comes out of this. My harsher penalty opinion stems from two things here. These aren’t babies that need to be protected from something Mom and Dad did. The average age of college freshmen tends to be OVER 18, due to many not attending college for a few months past graduation from high school. Second, you can’t tell me that in every case here, the student is 100 percent dumb to the fact that the parents did this. There is some guilt, somewhere. Even if not in every case, my personal opinion would be that it would be a MUCH higher percentage than some of you feel in this thread.

Further, though there is a defined set of student rights within the U.S., in almost every case that is based on valid enrollment and acceptance through honest means. The question is, do any of these universities have contracts for incoming students that stipulate anything related to falsifying information as part of admissions? And my guess is that most all of them do.

Of note:

Still hanging in the balance is the fate of the privileged scholars, at least some of whom may not have known about their parents’ alleged acts. It was no accident that none were immediately charged, US Attorney Andrew Lelling of Massachusetts said Tuesday.

“The prime movers of this fraud” were the parents and other defendants, Lelling said, though he noted some students may face charges down the road.

I sounds like there is a possibility some of the students will be implicated.

“Kill 'em all and let god sort them out!”

Please note in this forum we’re all talking about those students who are innocent, not those who committed/were part of a conspiracy to commit fraud.

It’s not “feel”. The official document, you know the group that set-up this sting, or whatever you want to call it, says they believe many students didn’t know. It’s not something we just dreamed up. It’s from the same group that is taking them down.

The same article also states the arranged pictures of the students as though they were on a team sport. Further news today implies there may indeed be charges against some of the students.

For all of us here, I’m pretty sure we aren’t talking about absolutes either way. You’re ideal might be a lower percentage than I imagine, but my guess is we all think that some of these students knew.

I am not talking about what someone wrote in the article, because i am not referring to an article.

The vast majority seem to be charged with “Conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud”. Others are charged with “Conspiracy to commit racketeering”, and the ringleader is charged with “Racketeering conspiracy; money laundering conspiracy; conspiracy to defraud US; obstruction of justice”.

Wikipedia says that “honest services fraud” is basically leagalese for “bribery”.

My ideal is those guilty of committing fraud get nailed for it to the fullest extent of the law along with any associated personal losses in reputation, earning potential, etc., each and every one. I didn’t think such a notion would be controversial.

For reference here is the affidavit where most of the juicy details can apparently be found.

Yeah it was posted above and it includes the line I quoted. They, the people in charge of this, don’t believe many of the students were even aware of this. It’s not just feels.