Couple who paid proctor to cheat on Lyme-Diseased daughter’s tests gets one month prison sentence

The first couple to be sentenced together in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal will each serve a month behind bars.

Gregory and Marcia Abbott paid $50,000 to have a test proctor falsify their daughter’s ACT exam in 2018, and $75,000 to do the same in her SAT subject tests.

Their daughter did not know about the plot, which the Abbotts said they only went through with because of the teenager’s debilitating Lyme Disease.

The disease also forced her to withdraw from school and turn down a soloist role with the Metropolitan Opera in New York according to the Abbotts.

Any goodwill that might have bought them with Judge Talwani was effectively squashed however with the revelation that Marcia had at one point threatened to sue the testing board after the proctor edited her daughter’s test. 

When the SAT Board was forced to delay the release of results in the subject tests the Abbott’s daughter took, Marcia called the company and became so enraged that said was flagged by the company and submitted in court.    

Marcia

Prison pals: Gregory and Marcia Abbott, the first couple sentenced in the Operation Varsity Blues cheating scandal, received a month in prison

Pride and joy: Earlier this year, their son Malcolm was arrested and sent to Rikers for a week after he bit his father

Pride and joy: Earlier this year, their son Malcolm was arrested and sent to Rikers for a week after he bit his father

The Abbotts’ daughter’s scores were markedly improved when she retook her standardized tests.

The teenager also flew from Tampa to Los Angeles to take her ACT and then later from Aspen to Los Angeles to take her SAT subject tests.

On her ACT, the young girl scored a 23 on her own but got a 35 when her test answers were changed by the proctor.

She scored in the mid-600s on both her subject tests without help, but thanks to the proctor’s tweaks received a perfect 800 in her math test and a 710 on the literature subject test. 

There have now been six parents and seven total defendants sentenced in the case. 

Meanwhile, prosecutors are continuing to move forward with new cases.

Xiaoning Sui, 48, a Chinese national who lives in British Columbia, was charged just last month.

She is accused of paying $400,000 to gain her son admission to UCLA as a soccer player with the help of Laura Janke.

PARENTS CHARGED IN OPERATION VARSITY BLUES

William Rick Singer, the ‘mastermind’ 

Rudolph Meredith 

Mark Riddell 

John Vandemoer 

Igor Dvorskiy 

Gordon Ernst 

William Ferguson 

Martin Fox

Donna Heinel 

Laura Janke 

Ali Khosroshahin 

Steven Masera

Jorge Salcedo 

Mikaela Sanford

David Sidoo

Jovan Vavic

Niki Williams 

Gregory and Marcia Abbott 

Gamal Abdelaziz

Diane and Todd Blake

Jane Buckingham 

Gordon Caplan 

Michael Center

I-Hsin “Joey” Chen 

Amy and Gregory Colburn 

Robert Flaxman 

Lori Loughlan and Mossimo Giannulli

Elizabeth and Manuel Henriquez

Douglas Hodge 

Felicity Huffman 

Agustin Huneeus 

Bruce and Davina Isackson

Michelle Janavs

Elisabeth Kimmel 

Marjorie Klapper

Toby MacFarlane 

Bill McGlashan 

Marci Palatella 

Peter Jan Sartorio 

Stephen Semprevivo 

Devin Sloane 

John Wilson 

Houmayoun Zadeg 

Robert Zangrillo  

 

The former soccer coach at USC was previously charged for helping write fake profiles for the children of defendants including Lori Loughlin.  

The complaint, which was obtained by DailyMail.com, reveals that the young man was accepted to UCLA last year, and that his mother paid $100,000 in late 2018 and another $300,000 in February of this year – just weeks before the scandal made headlines around the world. 

Those payments all went to the Key Worldwide Foundation according to the complaint, but the  second was later funneled to a soccer club controlled by Janke and Ali Khosroshahian.

This case does present one major hurdle for federal prosecutors however, because the defendant does not speak English.

The complaint states that her conversations with the scam’s mastermind William Rick Singer and others always took place with a translator on the phone, 

It is unclear if Sui’s son had started at the institution this year, especially since this story was revealed months before the indictment by the Los Angeles Times, though the family was not named in that report.

Sui was arrested in Spain and officials are in the process for getting her extradited to Boston, where she was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud in a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday. 

‘On or about October 24, 2018, Singer had a conference call with SUI, Recruiter 1 and a Chinese translator. In the conference call, Singer explained in English that he needed SUI to wire $100,000 to Singer’s bank account, which would be “paid to the coach at UCLA” in exchange for a letter of intent from the coach recruiting Applicant 1 onto his soccer team,’ states the complaint. 

‘Singer further explained that the $100,000 would be paid to “the UCLA men’s soccer coach directly.” The translator translated what Singer said into Chinese, telling SUI: “Your son is admitted to this  school through UCLA’s soccer team. 

‘That $100,000 is directly transferred to that soccer coach. So, although your son is a tennis player, because there is a place in soccer team, so it is the soccer team that takes your son.”‘

The court filing then states: ‘SUI responded, “OK.”‘

 

 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk