‘Desperate Housewives’ star Felicity Huffman and 12 other parents to plead guilty in US college scandal case
- Actress allegedly paid US$15,000 for a Harvard graduate to correct her daughter’s answers on the SAT, giving the girl’s score a 400-point boost
- Thirty-three parents have been charged in the case, and others are expected to follow through with plans to plead guilty
Felicity Huffman and a dozen other wealthy parents swept up in a far-reaching US college admissions scandal have agreed to plead guilty after being charged in the scheme, according to court records.
The actress and 12 other parents, including Los Angeles marketing guru Jane Buckingham, will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.
San Francisco Bay Area real estate developer Bruce Isackson will plead guilty to one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. His wife, Davina Isackson, will plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit fraud.
Michael Center, the former men’s tennis coach at the University of Texas at Austin, will also plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. Center is accused of accepting US$60,000 in cash and a US$40,000 donation to his tennis program to ensure a student was admitted as a recruited athlete.
The admissions scheme centred on William “Rick” Singer, owner of a for-profit Newport Beach college admissions company that parents are accused of paying to help their children cheat on college entrance exams and that allegedly falsified athletic records of students to enable them to secure admission to elite schools – including UCLA, the University of Southern California, Stanford, Yale and Georgetown – according to court records.
