In 2019, the Department of Justice charged nearly 60 individuals with participating in a scheme to secure admission to private universities through fraud and bribery. The charges cast a spotlight on the murky world of money and connections in higher education. At the center of the web was Rick Singer, a corrupt fixer who cooperated with DOJ and secretly recorded conversations but did not end up testifying at any trials. The defendants included parents of high school students, coaches and university administrators, test preparation specialists and test administrators. Prosecutors boldly chose to charge one overarching conspiracy and scheme among parents and others who dealt with Singer rather than separate schemes tied to particular students and parents. See Elkan Abramowitz & Jonathan S. Sack, “Hub, Spokes and Rim: Revisiting ‘Kotteakos’,” N.Y.L.J., May 7, 2019.

The vast majority of defendants pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Of the remainder, three defendants were acquitted at trial, and one had his conviction set aside by the district court due to misstatements by prosecutors in summation. In the case we discuss below, the government went to trial in 2021 against Gamal Abdelaziz, a casino executive, and John Wilson, founder of a private equity firm, on fraud, bribery and conspiracy charges which arose from their efforts to secure admission for their children, through Singer, at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Southern California (USC). They were convicted at trial and were sentenced to one year and one day in prison (Abdelaziz) and 15 months in prison (Wilson).

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