The non-Hollywood parents busted in college bribery scheme 

Alongside stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, dozens of wealthy business executives, branding experts and other parents have been charged as part of the college bribery scheme. 

The list of 48 includes the former COO of Wynn Resorts,  Gamal Abdelaziz, prolific private equity investor and CAA director Bill McGlashan, and youth branding expert Jane Buckingham.

Others are former TV executive Elisabeth Kimmel and vineyard owner Agustin Huneeus whose family is prestigious in Napa Valley. 

The collection of college test administrators and sports coaches also includes Gordie Ernst who was the personal tennis instructor for Michelle Obama and her daughters when they lived in the White House.  

They are each accused of paying SAT test administrators bribes to allow either for someone else to sit the test for their child or letting someone amend their answers afterwards to get them a higher score. 

 

Private equity investor Bill McGlashan (right) is shown with Bono, who he started a social impact fund with. He allegedly put his son through the scheme 

In some cases, children who had no athletic ability were given scholarships for sports they did not even play in exchange for direct bribes or ‘donations’ to a fictitious charity. 

McGlashan is accused of bribing test administrators to both let someone else correct his son’s ACT test after he had finished it, and creating a fake athletic profile for him to secure his position at USC. 

According to the indictment, his son spent a day taking the test but then returned to San Francisco with his father. 

The next day, when he was back in northern California according to cell phone data, someone else was allegedly in his place filling out the rest of the exam and fixing it.   

In July 2018, McGlashan discussed repeating the scheme for his two younger children. 

In a phone call which authorities listened into via a wire tap, he said: ‘One other, just family question, with [my younger son] now entering his sophomore year, and sort of, the process is beginning, we have him on time and a half. I told [my spouse] yesterday, and [my daughter] by the way, who is the, who I think is the one who needs the most time, has no extra time currently. 

‘And [my spouse] is talking to the doctor that assessed them, to get her to ask, to request time for [my daughter]. 

‘I told her she should be requesting double time for all of them,’ he said in reference to getting a doctor’s note to sign his younger kids off for more time on their tests.

‘So, what has to happen, is there has to be an appeal to get the multiple days.

‘The doc’s got to come up with stuff, discrepancies, to show why he needs multiple days. That he can’t sit six and a half hours taking one test,’ the unnamed fixer, who has not been charged because they cooperated, replied. 

They later added: ‘And so if he gets multiple days, then I can control the center.’ 

They also discussed the boy becoming accepted to the school ‘before he even applies’ through what the fixer described as a ‘side door’.  

McGlashan said he would pay $250,000 ‘in a heartbeat’ to go that route. 

Gamal Abdelaziz, the former president and COO of Wynn Resorts (left) and Jane Buckingham, the owner of the now defunct market research firm Youth Intelligence 

This is the handwriting sample Jane Buckingham allegedly sent Singer’s company for her son so that someone else could take the test in his place. She wrote ‘Good luck with this’ in the email with the sample 

He was worried about his son finding out about his involvement and asked: ‘Here’s the only question, does he know? Is there a way to do it in a way that he doesn’t know that happened?’ 

The fixer replied: ‘You don’t have to tell him a thing.’  

Lawyer Gordon Caplan paid $75,000 for his daughter to get into college

They then discussed creating an athlete profile for the boy and having him pose in a sports outfit to make it convincing.

McGlashan was placed on indefinite administrative leave from TPG on Tuesday as a result of the investigation, the company said in a statement Tuesday.  

Abdelaziz stepped down as the COO of Wynn in 2016.

He is accused of bribing Donna Heinel, the senior women’s athletics director at USC, to recruit his daughter for the basketball team in 2017. 

According to court documents, his daughter played high school basketball but was not gifted enough to get recruited as an athlete so he arranged for her to be one.  

He then made a $300,000 ‘donation’ to the fictitious charity run by ‘ringleader’ Rick Singer and then made monthly $20,000 payments directly to Heinel. 

His daughter got into the college but never joined the basketball team, according to the documents. 

In a phone call with the fixer, they said: ‘I’m not going to tell the IRS anything about the fact that your $300,000 was paid to Donna– Donna Heinel at USC to get [your daughter] into school even though she wasn’t a legitimate basketball player at that level.’   

Elisabeth Kimmel is accused of paying $270,000 for her daughter to get into Georgetown. She also allegedly pretended that her son was a pole vaulter to get him a scholarship to USC 

College administrators asked why his daughter did not show up to basketball practice that fall and were told that she’d suffered an injury in the summer. 

Jane Buckingham is a California mother who is known as one of the world’s leading experts in youth branding. 

She created the company Youth Intelligence which was a marketing firm with a focus on Generations X and Y. 

She is also charged in the scheme for allegedly paying $50,000 to have someone else take her son’s ACT exam in July 2018. 

Days before her son was due to fly to Texas to sit the exam in one of the test centers which was in on the scheme, however, he got tonsilitis. 

Buckingham, to avoid him flying, had him take a fake test at home while someone else took his test in Texas, it is alleged. 

He took it in his bedroom and believed  that it had secured him his place while his mother sent a handwriting sample to the person who was going to take the real test for him could match. 

Her son ended up scoring 35 out of 36 on the ACT. 

Months later in October, in a conversation wiretapped by investigators, Buckingham expressed interest in having someone take her daughter’s entrance exams as well. 

Kimmel and Singer made a fake athlete’s profile for her son which said he was a pole vaulter and included this photograph of someone else doing the sport 

Gregory Abbott, 68, founder and chairman of International Dispensing Corp., a successful food and beverage packaging company, and his wife Marcia Abbott, 59, were also named in Tuesday’s affidavit. 

The couple, who have homes in New York City and Aspen, Colorado, allegedly paid a total of $125,000 to have someone take the ACT and SAT subject tests for their daughter so she could gain entrance to Duke University. 

According to the affidavit, the Abbott Family Foundation made a ‘charitable donation’ of $50,000 to KWF in April 2018, four days before the Abbotts’ daughter took the ACT in Los Angeles. 

The exam was proctored by a fixer identified in court documents as Cooperating Witness 2, who corrected her answers after she finished, prosecutors say.  

She received a score of 35 out of 36 on that exam. 

A couple months later, Marcia Abbott called Singer about paying to arrange someone to take SAT subject tests for her daughter. That conversation was intercepted by investigators under a court-ordered wire tap, the affidavit states.  

Singer told her: ‘[Gregory Abbott] would have to be willing to pay for it,’ to which she replied: ‘Yeah, well he can donate, I mean, whatever the donations are.’

They agreed on a price of $75,000 during that call as the SAT subject tests are significantly more challenging than the ACT. 

Marcia Abbott contacted Singer again in September 2018 to arrange for someone to take the math and literature subject tests for her daughter because she thought she hadn’t done well enough taking the tests on her own. 

In a wiretapped phone call, Marcia Abbott said: ‘She’s convinced that she bombed the lit because she was too tired, so … And [Duke University] told us they didn’t want anything below a 750.’

Singer then tells Marcia Abbott that she was smart to have someone fix her daughter’s ACT because she would have received a score of 23 without the fixer’s help. 

Offended, Marcia Abbott says that her daughter had struggled because she was sick with mono at the time. 

The Abbott Family Foundation made a purported donation of $75,000 to the KWF charity days later, the affidavit states.  

A fixer amended the daughter’s answers on her subject tests after she took them, and she ended up with an 800 out of 800 on math and 710 out of 800 on literature. 

On a later phone call, the fixer indicated that she would have scored in the mid-600s without their help.  

Gregory Abbott was seen leaving federal court in New York City after presentment on Tuesday. 

Gregory Abbott, 68, founder and chairman of a successful food and beverage packaging company, and his wife Marcia, 59, allegedly paid a total of $125,000 to have someone take the ACT and SAT subject tests for their daughter so she could gain entrance to Duke University

Gregory Abbott is seen leaving federal court in New York City after presentment on Tuesday

Gordon Caplan is a New York City lawyer who allegedly used the system to get his daughter into college. 

He was apprehensive and said, according to the documents, that it felt ‘pretty weird’. 

In another conversation, he said: ‘If somebody catches this, what happens?’

He later said he worried his daughter would be ‘finished’ if she was found out. 

‘I’m not worried about the moral issue here. I’m worried about the, if she’s caught doing that, you know, she’s finished,’ Caplan said in one call. 

Later, once his daughter had been granted extra time, he expressed his apprehension again. 

‘Keep in mind I am a lawyer. So I’m sort of rules oriented. Doing this with you, no way– she’s taking the test. It’s her taking the test, right?  There’s no way…any trouble comes out of this, nothing like that?’ he asked. 

He was adamant that his daughter take the test herself and repeatedly asked questions the legality of the process. His wife, he said in one call, had become uncomfortable with it.  

Agustin Huneeus is a California wine maker who allegedly paid to get his daughter into college 

Singer assured him that his daughter would sit the test and that his company would perform ‘the magic on the back end’ of it. 

Caplan ended up paying $75,000 in November or December 2018 to have Singer arrange a proctor who corrected her answers after she took the test, according to the affidavit.  

Elisabeth Kimmel, the former president of Midwest Television, used the scheme to get both her daughter into Georgetown and her son into USC by pretending the former was a tennis player and the latter was a pole vaulter.

In 2013, the Meyer Charitable Foundation, a family foundation on which Kimmel and her spouse serve as officers, issued three checks totally $275,000 to KWF to get her daughter into Georgetown with the help of tennis coach Gordie Ernst.  

Kimmel’s daughter enrolled at the university in 2013 and graduated in 2017. She was not a member of the tennis team during any of her four years.  

In 2017, Singer instructed Laura Janke, the former assistant women’s soccer coach at USC, to create an athletic profile for Kimmel’s son, presenting him as a track and field athlete. 

The profile featured a photograph of someone pole vaulting that was not him. 

Kimmel allegedly paid KWF $200,000 to have her son admitted to USC. 

Their plan was almost foiled when, during a college visit, an advisor told him he was a ‘track athlete’ and he replied: ‘No I’m not,’ indicating that he was unaware of his mother’s actions to get him into USC. 

He ultimately enrolled in USC in the fall of 2018 but never attended track practice. 

In January 2019, at the instruction of investigators, Singer called Kimmel and informed her that the USC admissions department was asking about athletes not showing up at practice and that her son’s name had come up. 

Singer told Kimmel that should she receive a phone call asking about her son, she should tell officials that he had gotten injured over the summer and could no longer compete, according to the affidavit.   

Agustin Huneeus, a California wine maker, participated in both the college entrance exam cheating scheme and the college recruitment scheme for his daughter in 2017 and 2018, including by conspiring to bribe Heinel and Jovan Vavic, the USC water polo coach to facilitate his daughter’s admission to USC as a purported water polo recruit, according to the indictment. 

He allegedly wired $50,000 to KWF to have someone help his daughter take the SAT and to correct her answers afterward. 

In a call discussing his daughter’s scores after the test, Huneeus expressed concern about another indicted parent, Bill McGlashan, who had told him that he wasn’t doing anything dirty to get his child into a good school. 

‘Is Bill McGlashan doing any of this shit? Is he just talking a clean game with me and helping his kid or not? ‘Cause he makes me feel guilty,’ Huneeus told Singer. 

During that same wiretapped call in September 2018, Huneeus and Singer discussed creating a water polo profile for the former’s daughter, which included a photo with her face photoshopped on another player. 

Singer said the profile would cost Huneeus $200,000. The following month, the father wired $50,000 to Heinel. His daughter ultimately received a conditional acceptance letter. 

In late November, Singer called Huneeus to inform him that the IRS was performing an audit on KWF. 

Huneeus said if he was asked about his donations, ‘I’m going to say that I’ve been inspired how you’re helping underprivileged kids get into college. Totally got it’. 

THE FULL LIST OF PEOPLE CHARGED WITH COLLEGE ADMITTANCE SCAM

THE STARS

Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli spent $500,000 getting their two daughters into USC, according to prosecutors 

Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli

Actress Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo are among the three most well known names on the list. They have two daughters, Olivia, 20, Isabella, 19, and Mossimo also has a son from a previous relationship. It is not clear which of their children is in college.  

Olivia is a YouTube star who has amounted millions of fans online but she is also enrolled at USC, as is their 19-year-old daughter Isabella. 

They allegedly paid $50,000 to get their oldest daughter into USC under the guise that she was a crew coxswain when in fact she does not row crew. 

Felicity Huffman is accused of paying a $15,000 bribe to get her oldest daughter Sofia into USC 

Felicity Huffman 

Huffman is best known for her role on Desperate Housewives. 

She is married to fellow actor William H. Macy but he has not been charged in the indictment. 

The pair have two daughters, Sofia, 18, and Georgia, 16.

Huffman is accused of paying $15,000 for someone else to sit her daughter Sofia’s SAT exam which got her into USC.  

THE COLLEGE PROFESSORS, COACHES AND ‘MASTERMIND’

Rick Singer ran The Key, a college preparation business 

William Rick Singer, the ‘mastermind’ 

Singer is accused of leading the scam. He led a college counseling program and, according to prosecutors, also ran a fake charity through which he funneled bribes. The scam worked in two ways; he would have people come into the exam to correct students’ answers and he also then bribed sports coaches to offer them scholarships, in some cases for sports they did not even play. 

Rudolph Meredith 

Meredith is a women’s soccer coach at Yale. In his bio on the college’s website, he is heralded as the ‘winningest’ coach, with 24 seasons under his belt. 

Mark Riddell 

Riddell is the director of IMG Academy , a college entrance exam preparation company.  

Rudolph Meredith, the women’s soccer coach at Yale (left) and Mark Riddell, director of IMG Academy 

John Vandemoer 

Vandemoer is the head sailing coach at Stanford.   

Gordon Ernst 

Ernst is the head of women’s tennis at the University of Rhode Island. 

He taught at Georgetown in the past and worked as a personal tennis coach for Michelle Obama and her daughters, Sasha and Malia, while they were in the White House. 

John Vandemoer (left) is the head sailing coach at Stanford. Gordie Ernst was Michelle Obama’s private tennis coach when she was First Lady. He is now the head of women’s tennis at the University of Rhode Island.

Igor Dvorskiy

Dvorskiy is the president of the West Hollywood College Preparatory School and he worked at the West Hollywood Test Center

Niki Williams 

Williams worked as a test administrator at one of the test centers Singer told parents he ‘controlled’.  

Houmayoun Zadeg

Homa H Zadeh is a professor at USC. He is the Associate Professor and Director, Advanced Education Program in Periodontology. 

Michael Center

Center is the men’s soccer coach at the University of Texas.  

Homa H Zadeh (left) is a professor at USC. Michael Center (right) is the men’s soccer coach at the University of Texas.

Donna Heinel 

Heinel is the senior women’s athletics director at USC. She is alleged to have accepted a $50,000 from Lori Loughlin and her husband, among others, for admitting fraudulent tests.

Laura Janke 

Janke is a former assistant soccer coach at USC. She allegedly took payment from Loughlin and her husband for their youngest daughter. 

Donna Heinel (left) is the senior athletic director at USC. Laura Janke (right) is a former assistant soccer coach

Ali Khosroshahin 

Khosroshahin is the head women’s soccer coach at USC. 

Jovan Vavic

Vavic is the head coach for the men’s and women’s water polo teams at USC. 

Ali Khosroshahin (left) is the head of women’s soccer at USC and Jovan Vavic is the head of the men’s and women’s water polo teams at USC 

PARENTS 

Bill McGlashan  

McGlashan is a prolific private equity investor who is the founder and managing partner of the firm TPG Growth. 

He is also at the helm of The Rise Fund, a social impact fund he launched with Bono. 

Gregory and Marcia Abbott 

New York couple Gregory and Marcia Abbott, 68 and 59, were also named. 

Gregory Abbott is the founder and chairman of International Dispensing Corp., a successful food and beverage packaging company. 

The couple, who have homes in New York City and Aspen, Colorado, allegedly paid a total of $125,000 to have someone take the ACT and SAT subject tests for their daughter so she could gain entrance to Duke University. 

Bill McGlashan and Gregory Abbott are pictured

Gamal Abdelaziz

Abdelaziz stepped down as president and COO of Wynn Resorts in 2016.

He is accused of bribing Donna Heinel, the senior women’s athletics director at USC, to recruit his daughter for the basketball team in 2017. 

According to court documents, his daughter played high school basketball but was not gifted enough to get recruited as an athlete so he arranged for her to be one.  

He then made a $300,000 ‘donation’ to the fictitious charity run by ‘ringleader’ Rick Singer and then made monthly $20,000 payments directly to Heinel. 

His daughter got into the college but never joined the basketball team, according to the documents. 

In a phone call with the fixer, they said: ‘I’m not going to tell the IRS anything about the fact that your $300,000 was paid to Donna– Donna Heinel at USC to get [your daughter] into school even though she wasn’t a legitimate basketball player at that level.’   

Jane Buckingham 

Buckingham is the owner of the now defunct market research firm, Youth Intelligence.  She sold the company in 2003. 

She is charged in the scheme for allegedly paying $50,000 to have someone else take her son’s ACT exam in July 2018 because he had tonsilitis. 

Buckingham sent a handwriting sample for her son to a test taker and had him take a fake exam at home so he wouldn’t know about the fraud, court documents indicate. 

Gamal Abdelaziz, the president and COO of Wynn Resorts (left) and Jane Buckingham, the owner of the now defunct market research firm Youth Intelligence 

Gordon Caplan

Caplan is a financial attorney and partner at the firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York City. He lives in Connecticut.

He allegedly paid $75,000 to have Singer arrange a proctor to corrected his daughter’s answers after she took the ACT in November or December 2018. 

Robert Flaxman 

Flaxman is the CEO, Co-founder, Crown Realty & Development, Inc, a real estate company based in Orange County. 

Agustin Huneeus 

Vineyard owner Huneeus owns a range of wines that are produced in Napa Valley. 

He allegedly participated in both the college entrance exam cheating scheme and the college recruitment scheme for his daughter in 2017 and 2018 by conspiring to bribe Heinel and Jovan Vavic, the USC water polo coach, to facilitate his daughter’s admission to USC as a purported water polo recruit, according to the indictment. 

Elisabeth Kimmel 

Kimmel, of Las Vegas, Nevada, is the former president of Midwest Television. She sold it in 2017 for $325million. 

She allegedly used the scheme to get her daughter into Georgetown and her son into USC by pretending the former was a tennis player and the latter was a pole vaulter. 

Kimmel ultimately facilitated $475,000 in payments to KWF, according to the affidavit.  

Toby MacFarlane 

MacFarlane and his wife Christy are well known on the San Diego social and charity circuit. 

He sits on the board of multiple companies and the family has their own trust but it is not exactly clear what he does. 

Elisabeth Kimmel is the former president of Midwest Television. She sold it in 2017 for $325million. Agustin Huneeus, whose family owns vineyards in Napa Valley, was also charged 

Marjorie Klapper 

Diane and Todd Blake 

I-Hsin “Joey” Chen  

Amy and Gregory Colburn 

Marci Palatella 

Peter Jan Sartorio 

Stephen Semprevivo 

Devin Sloane 

John Wilson

Robert Zangrillo 

Steven Masera 

William Ferguson 

Martin Fox

Jorge Salcedo 

Bruce and Davina Isackson 

Mikaela Sanford

David Sidoo

Michelle Janavs  

Elizabeth and Manuel Henriquez

Douglas Hodge 

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