USC Water Polo Coach, Associate AD Charged In Admissions Scandal

University of Southern California water polo coach Jovan Vavic and senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel have both been charged with mail fraud as part of what federal officials are saying was a massive scheme to cheat college admissions standards.

The news broke today, with the Justice Department saying it had arrested “dozens of individuals involved in a nationwide conspiracy that facilitated cheating on college entrance exams.” The Justice Department website includes a long list of names charged in the scandal. You can see the full list here. Vavic and Heinel are both included under “Charged by Indictment.”

Other schools named in the indictment: Georgetown, Stanford, UCLA, the University of San Diego, USC, Texas, Wake Forest and Yale.

The Scandal

The scandal centers around a man named William Rick Singer, who founded a for-profit college counseling service called “The Edge College & Career Network,” alongside a non-profit called the “Key Worldwide Foundation.”

The indictment alleges that Singer worked with parents to have someone take the ACT or SAT exams for their kids. The indictment names Mark Riddell as the primary test-taker and says he would either take the exam for the kids or change their answers. Singer would also allegedly bribe schools to designate students as recruited athletes (thereby lowering the academic admission standards) even when the students were not recruited athletes. The indictment says he would use the Key Worldwide Foundation to conceal the bribe money.

U.S. officials says that the parents using Singer to cheat the system were wealthy and famous.

“These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege,” the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts said in NPR’s coverage of the scandal. “They include, for example, CEOs of private and public companies, successful securities and real estate investors, two well-known actresses, a famous fashion designer, and the co-chairman of a global law firm.”

The indictment says that the parents paid Singer between $15,000 and $75,000 per test. Singer would advise the parents to get their kids extra time to take the test, sometimes by having the kids feign learning disabilities. Some of the money paid would be used as bribe money to test administrators who would allow someone else to secretly take the test in place of the student.

In the more sport-specific angle, the indictment says Singer would bribe coaches and school officials to designate students as recruited athletes. Other indicted individuals would help fabricate “athletic profiles” that falsely billed the students as successful high school athletes in their admissions materials.

Water Polo Specific

The indictment specifically lays out how officials say this process played out with USC’s water polo program. Singer paid $250,000 to a bank account that funded Vavic’s water polo team, the indictment says. In return, Vavic designated two students as water polo recruits. The indictment also says that Singer paid for Vavic’s children to attend private school, disguising the payments as a scholarship.

Heinel is also named. The indictment says she received payments of $20,000 a month and in return helped more than two dozen students get admitted to USC as athletes even though their credentials were fake and some of the students didn’t even play the sports they were billed as being recruited for.

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Calswimfan
5 years ago

The U$C moniker countinues to fight on…

Michele
5 years ago

Disgusting

Ol' Longhorn
5 years ago

Favorite quote in this whole thing was the designer guy husband of one of the actresses who was caught in an email saying, essentially, “anything but ASU!”.

Billy
5 years ago

I’m not surprised one bit. Stuff like this has been going on for decades. Do you think that a college would reject a son or a daughter of a very wealthy parent who would make a sizable donation to the school? Heck no, they wouldn’t. I knew a man who worked for the admissions department at Stanford. He told me that Stanford keeps a data base of every high school senior whose parents are worth $10 million or more.

There has always been two sets of rules, one for the very wealthy and influential and the other for the regular folks. It’s always about the money. Less qualified students from a wealthy family always get a second look.

Snarky
Reply to  Billy
5 years ago

Billy. There’s a big difference between fraud (either by cheating on SATs and ACTs or bribing coaches to be labeled an athlete) and a university stetching admissions for a wealthy legacy. I’ve seen very rich legacies NOT get into top-end schools because they either didn’t have the grades or board scores. These people used their money to cheat on tests and/or bribe coaches and athletic directors charged with being the gatekeepers. One is a relic of the past and the other os criminal and sickening.

David Berkoff
5 years ago

Disgusting. Lock ’em up.

Dia Rianda
5 years ago

Stanford sailing coach just plead guilty to charges of accepting two checks which went to the Stanford sailing program in exchange for two pink envelopes. His lawyer from Nixon announced this live just a few minutes ago.

Orlando Anderson
5 years ago

Cheat On!!

Brian M
Reply to  Orlando Anderson
5 years ago

This is way bigger than USC. They have only just begun to scratch the surface…you will be quite surprised how many schools are caught up in this.

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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