Hollywood College Admissions Cheating Scheme

Introduction
Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are only a few of the actors whose careers have been unfortunately overshadowed by a cheating scandal. This article will show you that cheating is no joke, based on the experiences of those embroiled in the highest profile cheating scandal in recent years.
The Hollywood Cheating Scandal had less of an impact on academia than you might think, though. As newsworthy as these stories are, and how the scandal was broke, the involvement of high-profile actors from Hollywood only revealed what had ostensibly been going on for years among the general public.
In addition to explaining the details of the cheating—what it entailed and how it was carried out—this article will analyze some of the causes and effects of the cheating scandal. If you have been curious about the Hollywood Cheating Scandal and want to learn more, you have come to the right place.
The information in this article will help you draw your own conclusions about the cheating scandal instead of relying only on what you have heard from other people. You will learn about the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of the scandal.
The FBI’s official name for the investigation into the cheating scandal is Operation Varsity Blues.
Who: The Accused
About 50 people have been indicted so far. Of those, around 30 are parents with the remainder consisting of the people accused of racketeering: organizing and managing the cheating business.
* Felicity Huffman. Felicity Huffman is an Academy Award-nominated actor but is now known even more for being charged with felony crimes including conspiracy to commit fraud. She is one of the stars of the television show Desperate Housewives. 
* Lori Loughlin. Another high-profile actor charged with felony crimes in relation to the Hollywood Cheating Scandal is Lori Loughlin. Loughlin is known for her role as Aunt Becky on the television show Full House. 
* J. Mossimo Giannulli. Lori Loughlin is married to celebrity fashion designer J. Mossimo Giannulli, who faces the same charges as his wife. Mossimo’s line of clothes bears his name and had been distributed by Target stores since the year 2000, only a few years after the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Giannulli sold the Mossimo company in 2006.     
* William Rick Singer. Hardly a household name, Singer is the alleged mastermind behind the Hollywood cheating scandal and ran a lucrative business targeting wealthy parents. Singer styles himself an “admissions consultant,” and founded a non-profit company called The Key. The Key billed itself as being a standard college preparatory service. Singer had long made a name for himself in the business and wrote a book about how to get into college called Getting In: Gaining Admission to Your College of Choice. 
* Mark Riddell. Ex-tennis pro Riddell worked in college prep at a private school in Florida and has been accused mainly of taking tests for students using a fake ID, sneaking the students the answers to the tests, or even manipulating the results of the tests.
* Olivia Jade Giannulli, daughter of Lori Laughlin and Mossimo Guannuli, has not been accused of a crime. However, she is a social media influencer who proudly proclaimed to her followers on YouTube, “I do want the experience of like game days, partying… I don't really care about school, as you guys all know.” 
Naturally, Singer faces the most charges and the most serious ones including obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, racketeering, and several different counts of conspiracy. If convicted, Singer could face up to 60 years in prison and over a million dollars in fines.
Who: Law Enforcement
Some 200 federal agents were involved in building the case, mainly overseen by the FBI. The investigation apparently took only 10 months to research.
United States federal attorney Andrew E. Lelling is credited for officially laying charges in the Hollywood cheating scandal.
What
The parents have been allegedly spending as much as $6 million to ensure that their children get into the college or university of their choice. 
The colleges and universities involved in the Hollywood cheating scandal include several of the most prestigious schools in the country including:
* Yale
* Georgetown
* Stanford
* UCLA
* Wake Forest University
* University of Texas
* University of San Diego
* University of Southern California 
Singer used his organization, which was officially designated a non-profit, as what is essentially a money laundering institution. Through The Key, Singer would process the bribes by calling them charitable donations to the non-profit, which claimed to help at-risk and disadvantaged youth from around the world.
Wealthy parents paid Singer, who washed the money through The Key, and then paid off numerable persons in the form of bribes.
Where
The Hollywood cheating scandal might have involved several Hollywood actors but it spans six states, which is one of the reasons why the case is under federal jurisdiction.
In fact, Singer’s “non-profit” organization The Key operated in five countries in addition to the United States and had branches in over 80 American cities.

Many of the charges have been filed in a Massachusetts District Court.
When
The charges were filed on March 12, 2019. However, the FBI claims that Singer had started the admissions racketeering as early as 2011.
Why
Each person involved in the Hollywood cheating scandal has a slightly different motivation. 
Parents may be motivated by a sense of entitlement, by a belief that even though their children did not make good enough grades to get into top colleges that they deserved to be there anyway.
Singer, the school coaches, SAT proctors, and others on the business side of things were motivated more by money.      
How
According to the FBI, Singer went to unbelievable distances to fulfill his clients’ desires including photoshopping images to make the students look like athletes so that they could get a sports scholarship.
While there are many legitimate college prep companies that actually do help students get into college, Singer and The Key were apparently going an extra step by making substantial bribes to college coaches. Additionally, Singer is accused of bribing the moderators of the important standardized tests or admissions examinations like the ACT and the SAT. 
Singer had established himself as one of the nation’s foremost admissions consultants and even started his own online high school called the University of Miami Online High School. The University of Miami Online High School proved so successful that it was purchased by college prep behemoth Kaplan. While the University of Miami Online High School was in Singer’s hands, about 18,000 clients paid $15,000 each to attend.
Each of the accused parents in the Hollywood cheating scandal apparently used different means to ensure their sons and daughters got into college.
Using Singer’s advice, parents like Felicity Huffman paid about $15,000 for services like forging SAT scores or receiving fake diagnoses for learning disabilities in order to buy time to take the exam. 
Singer would take the money the parents paid, and use it to pay people like SAT proctors.      
The coaches in top schools like Yale were also involved by actively agreeing to pretend a student was a member of a sports team.
Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli face potentially more serious fines given they have been accused of paying Singer as much as $500,000. In their case, Loughlin and Giannulli paid bribes to USC athletic coaches, asking the coaches to claim the kids were on the sports team even when they were not. In fact, the coach allegedly agreed to name Loughlin’s daughter as the Los Angeles Marine Club rowing crew coxswain.
As far as how the FBI first got word of the scandal, apparently investigators were working on an entirely different case related to stock market fraud when they received a tip. 
It is unclear whether the financial executive who provided the tip received lenience in exchange for the information. Regardless, the tip led federal investigators to Rudy Meredith, a sports coach at Yale University. Meredith was the one who agreed to pretend that students served on sports teams when they actually did not and even processed fake photographs and admissions documents to facilitate the students’ entry into Yale.
Meredith is now one of the 50 people being charged with felony crimes, and has since resigned from the Yale post.  
Causes
The causes of the Hollywood cheating scandal are complex. A culture of entitlement is certainly part of the root causes.
Wealthy parents who cannot accept that their children have to go to a state university or a community college—if any college at all—felt it acceptable to pay bribes in order to get their children into school.
People like Singer knew this and built a business around helping entitled wealthy families perpetuate their privileged position.
Perhaps these parents felt pressured, as if they felt inferior to others whose children actually earned their way into Yale or Stanford.
The coaches and others involved accepted the bribe money from Singer knowingly, themselves motivated more by a desire to make money or supplement their salary. It is likely people like Coach Meredith had no idea they could ever get caught.
Singer built a lucrative business around helping wealthy and entitled persons get their way, and was motivated by money. It is possible that as the business took off and became as successful as it did, Singer found it difficult to extricate himself from the position. He could have justified his actions by claiming that if he did not help these parents, someone else would.
Greed at the level of college sports is also a major cause of the cheating scandal. If college sports were not such a big business, it would not be possible to lower the admissions standards for students who do well in sports but not in their academic careers.
This is not to say that athletics are not important or that sports are any less significant than any other aspect of personal and professional development. However, these types of cheating scandals are facilitated by the different standards established for college athletes during the admissions process.
Strain theory and social pressure are also to blame in the Hollywood cheating scandal. When students and their parents feel that their entire identity and self-worth is caught up into how prestigious their school is, they may be more likely to break the law in order to compete.
Overall, though, a culture of entitlement remains the most fundamental reason for the cheating scandal. Money can buy a person out of trouble. The wealthy have been taught that if they ever need anything, all they have to do is pay someone rather than going through the hard work everyone else has to do.
It is unclear as to why parents whose children showed promise as social media influencers like Olivia Jade would even care so much about whether their daughter went to USC. To lie, cheat, and bribe instead of funding their daughter’s budding business makes little sense.
In the United States, higher education is a privilege, not a right. Therefore, many students may resort to cheating in some way, shape, or form in order to get a scholarship or to get into school. Perhaps the Hollywood cheating scandal will raise awareness about the many alternatives students have to attending college and university, or will showcase the need for a more meritorious system of college admissions.
The FBI’s hard work in the Hollywood cheating scandal investigation and the ongoing efforts to prosecute all involved shows that the government is becoming more concerned about the broad and nefarious impact of white collar crime.
Effects
The parents involved in the Hollywood cheating scandal face up to five years in prison and substantial fines. 
Many of the accused athletic coaches have resigned from their posts at top colleges and universities.
Undoubtedly the actors involved may suffer consequences in their career, as their reputations have been sullied by the Hollywood cheating scandal.
The students are also experiencing fallout. Olivia Jade Giannulli had once looked forward to a lucrative partnership with cosmetics giant Sephora, but Sephora dropped her and so did another one of her corporate sponsors, Hewlett Packard.
It is currently unclear as to how the students themselves will be handled, as no charges have been formally filed against them—only their parents. The students could certainly get kicked out of the schools, but since their parents have not yet been convicted in a court of law, nothing can really be done except to remain vigilant.
Broader effects of the Hollywood cheating scandal include a more rigorous admissions system in American colleges and universities. 
The sports scholarship admissions part of the scandal draws attention to the fact that students who enter as varsity athletes do not have to make the same level of grades as their counterparts who are not involved in sports. 
The Hollywood cheating scandal also shows how legacy admissions can also be problematic. While legacy admissions are technically legal, they can be considered unethical on the grounds that the admissions committee will allow an otherwise underachieving or unqualified student admission simply because a parent or grandparent attended the school.
 Considering the fact that Singer had many clients whose names did not surface during this specific investigation shows that college entrance cheating scandals are more common than was once thought. Therefore, one of the effects of the Hollywood cheating scandal is raising awareness as to the unfair nature of higher education in America. Some schools are profit-driven. Even state schools that receive government funding for their operation can become party to cheating scandals. The problem is extensive, showing how desperate the schools are for money, putting profitability and perks over education and moral character.
Singer is only one scandalous admissions advisor, too. There may be many others who prey on the fears of wealthy parents, and even those who are not wealthy but who want desperately to help their children get ahead by going to university.
It is possible, for instance, that some admissions advisors target less privileged parents and students.
Effects on Hardworking Students
The Hollywood cheating scandal draws attention to the underlying problem of living in a society that claims to be a meritocracy but really is not. Every year, millions of hardworking students have the grades and credentials to get into top colleges and universities but cannot matriculate because they do not have enough money to pay the tuition.
Every year, millions of hardworking students work jobs even while they study all day and night, in order to get into the school of their dreams. With only a limited number of slots available each year, colleges and universities turn down countless qualified students who actually did have what it took to succeed. The Hollywood cheating scandal shows that there are a lot of students currently enrolled in school who do not deserve to be there, and who are there only because their parents bribed someone or because they come from a privileged or legacy family.
High school students who simply do not make the grades to get into a school of their choice have many options other than cheating. Starting a business or deferring admission, traveling abroad or learning a trade can lead to lucrative and successful careers without the burden of committing an unnecessary crime.
Conclusion
In spite of the Hollywood cheating scandal, the vast majority of college advisors, of college deans and coaches, of college preparatory services, tutors, and educational consultants are honest. Parents and students, as well as educators and administrators, should not paint all such services with the same brush.    
Services that help students to get into school through genuine hard work, time management, or psychological counseling are extremely helpful—and legal. It is important that students receive the help they need and deserve, but no student should receive special consideration on the grounds that their parents have money.