US college scam: Chinese mum Xiaoning Sui accused of paying US$400,000 to get son into UCLA as fake soccer player
- Prosecutors say Xiaoning Sui paid US$400,000 to a sham charity operated by admissions consultant William ‘Rick’ Singer, the scam’s admitted mastermind
A Chinese woman was arrested in Spain and charged with paying the mastermind of the college admissions scandal US$400,000 to ensure her son was admitted to the University of California, Los Angeles as a phoney soccer player.
Xiaoning Sui - whom prosecutors identified as a 48-year-old “Chinese national” and a resident of Surrey in British Columbia, Canada - was arrested by Spanish authorities Monday night, according to the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts, which is seeking Sui’s extradition.
Sui, the 35th parent to be charged in the college admissions scandal, has been indicted on one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and honest services mail fraud.
To guarantee her son a spot at UCLA, prosecutors say Sui turned to William “Rick” Singer, the Newport Beach college admissions consultant who earlier this year admitted to overseeing a sprawling, decade-long scheme that defrauded some of the country’s most selective universities with rigged college entrance exams, fake recruiting profiles and six-figure bribes to college coaches and administrators.
Sui, 48, paid Singer US$400,000 to have her son admitted to UCLA as a recruited soccer player, despite that the boy had not played the sport competitively, according to an indictment returned by a grand jury in March.
The alleged bribe ranks among the highest in the scheme.
Some other parents are accused of making payments of up to US$500,000, and some pursued the scheme multiple times, prosecutors say, with payments totaling up to US$1.2 million.
Prosecutors did not explain why Sui was not part of the original group of parents charged.
Court documents show Sui’s indictment was filed in March but remained under seal until Tuesday.
The scandal has ensnared dozens of wealthy parents accused of paying bribes to rig their children’s SAT and ACT scores or get them admitted as recruited athletes to elite schools across the United States, including Yale, Stanford and Georgetown universities.
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Of the 51 people previously charged, 23 have pleaded guilty, including Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman , who paid US$15,000 to rig her daughter’s SAT score.
She was sentenced last week to 14 days in prison, 250 hours of community service and a US$30,000 fine.
Another 28 defendants are contesting the charges against them, including Full House actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, who are accused of paying to get their two daughters into USC as fake athletes on the crew team.
Singer, who agreed to cooperate with the government and collect evidence against his clients, snared many of them in phone conversations the FBI was secretly listening in on.
In an August 2018 phone call, Singer told Sui he could “guarantee” her son’s admission to UCLA in exchange for the payment, according to Andrew Lelling, the US attorney in Massachusetts, in the indictment.
Between August and October, Sui provided Singer with her son’s high school transcript and photos of him playing tennis.
Rick Singer faked students’ CVs in college admission bribery scandal. He seems to have faked his own credentials too
Laura Janke, an assistant soccer coach at the University of Southern California who was working for Singer, helped him fake an athletic profile that included a photo of a different student playing competitive soccer and presented Sui’s son as a “top player” for two private clubs in Canada, according to the US.
Singer worked with a Chinese interpreter to keep Sui updated on her son’s application, told her it would be handled “in a special way” and assured her that her son would “not know anything is happening”.
Sui wired a US$100,000 payment to a charity Singer controlled, which he said would be paid to a UCLA coach in exchange for a seat at the college, prosecutors claim.
Sui’s son was admitted to UCLA in November as a soccer recruit and awarded a 25 per cent scholarship, and Sui sent an additional US$300,000 to Singer’s charity as her final payment in the scam, the government alleges.
Citing UCLA’s athletics department, The Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, has reported that the boy got a provisional acceptance in October but was never admitted.
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Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for UCLA, said in a statement the school took “immediate corrective action” after Jorge Salcedo, UCLA’s head men’s soccer coach at the time, and 49 others were charged in connection with Singer’s scheme in March.
Tamberg said he was prevented by law and school policy from discussing the specifics of Sui’s case, but added that UCLA “can revoke the admission and athletics scholarship offer of any admitted student or dismiss any enrolled student who is found to have misrepresented information on their application.”
UCLA isn’t aware of any other “currently enrolled student-athletes” being investigated by federal prosecutors, Tamberg said.
Tribune News Service, Bloomberg, Associated Press
