In March of 2019, the United States got a much needed, albeit brief, break from the ongoing soap opera Donald Trump 20500.
Instead of the media’s regularly scheduled programming, they brought you a mind-numbing story of greed, privilege and deception.
Like any soap opera, it has a story and plot line that just keeps going.
It is a true story about how the wealthy bought their way into prestigious colleges for their already overprivileged kids and the criminal case that ensued.
Riding into the diamond-encrusted scene with Barclay’s Visa Black Cards blowing across the set are the Good Guys of Justice (FBI) to capture all the Gucci wearing, Bentley driving desperados.
The discovery of this crime wasn’t uncovered by accident when investigating a body found in the trunk of a car, some beat cop’s gut intuition, a mysterious letter being delivered to FBI headquarters or through wire taps. It was found the good old-fashioned way.
The criminal enterprise was discovered when Morrie Tobin, who is (or was) a financial executive and an executive vice-president at Segami Images, Inc, was being investigated for securities fraud when he offered a tip that ripped the roof off of the whole scam in order to save his own ass from doing years in prison in what is called a pump-and-dump investment ruse.
A pump-and-dump investment scam is when the price of a certain stock is embellished so it can be sold at a profit.
To be more precise, Tobin hid the fact that he had control of two companies (Environmental Packaging Technologies Holdings Inc. and CURE Pharmaceutical Holding Corp.) from investors which is apparently a no-no.
He then sold the shares in these companies without disclosing the sales to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) which is another no-no.
Tobin also forgot to mention to the SEC that he had stakes in these companies thus violating a law that puts limitations on sales by company insiders. Whoopsies.
The FBI initially referred to him as a tipster, but that wasn’t entirely true.
He was doing what common criminals do to save their hide. He was making a deal to cooperate in order to keep him from doing any real hard time.
Snitching. It’s just not for members of the mob anymore.
Tobin had become their stool pigeon. An informer, snitch, stoolie, rat, squealer, nark, fink, betrayer.
Still better yet, in the eyes of the FBI, their little pigeon delivered.
Morrie Tobin blew the lid off of a cheating scandal that ended up netting over 50 people involved in a scheme that netted coaches and administrators millions of dollars in profit.
It
is suspected that at least 350 people participated in the scam on multiple
levels and varying degrees of duplicity.
The
FBI is alluding that more arrests are coming.
It also netted two actresses. One, Lori Laughlin (The Edge of Night, Full House, Fuller House) who had carved herself a wholesome public persona of the good Christian girl next door.
The other actress, Emmy Award winning actress Felicity Huffman, who had created a somewhat different public persona for herself; one of honesty and self-righteousness.
The scam went like this: parents would pay money to a William “Rick” Singer. He would in turn help their children cheat on college entrance exams and falsify athletic records to make sure they were admitted to schools like Stanford, Duke, Wake Forest, Yale, Georgetown, UCLA (University of California Los Angeles), Northeastern University, University of Texas, and USC (University of Southern California).
Singer always made sure that he would give the right amount of money to the right employees of the colleges to ensure the con was a success.
Under Singer’s direction, these parents would donate funds to a fake charity he had established.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the parents claimed the donation as a charitable deduction on their income taxes at tax time.
Since 1999 Singer helped high school and college students navigate the admissions process.
To be fair not every client, he claimed to have over 700 of them, had participated in the scam.
Singer has stated that only a small group of them used his services for nefarious purposes.
The FBI has stated that all this seemed to change in 2011 when Singer figured out a way to make more money especially when wealthy parents came calling in order to cut a few corners because the rich always are on the lookout for ways to dodge the system.
He told these parents that he could get their kids into whatever college they wanted. For a price.
Some of the parents paid at least $200,000, while others gave up to $6.5 million to guarantee their child’s admission to these schools.
Lori Laughlin and her husband gave Singer about $500,000 to get their daughters into USC.
As the old Southern saying goes, ‘That which is born in the dark, comes out in the light.’
It was just a matter of time before Singer and his four flush was discovered.
For public faces like Lori Laughlin and Felicity Huffman, the impact of these actions was almost instantaneous. Almost.
Lori Laughlin was kicked off the final season of Fuller House and lost her movie/TV deal with The Hallmark Channel.
Ms. Laughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, spent 12 hours in jail before having to post bail of $1 million each before being released. They also had to surrender their passports.
The couple’s bail was a lot higher than what Felicity Huffman had to post ($250,000) due to the fact that they paid a lot more money to Singer; they were both wire taps and videos shown on YouTube demonstrating their callousness towards what they were doing as well as knowing it was wrong.
The couple also owns homes outside the United States and were considered risks as to whether or not they would show up for court.
Lori Laughlin was arrested at the airport in Los Angeles after coming in from Canada which most likely proved the prosecutor’s point of being a possible flight risk.
However, at the time of this article, their two daughters, Isabella Rose and Olivia Jade Giannulli, were still attending college at USC. They are claiming that they’ll leave the college at the end of the semester because they are being bullied.
How true this is has been undetermined. Most kids who experience bullying tend not to stay around any longer than they have to.
While Laughlin’s life has pretty much imploded since her arrest, the same can’t be said for Felicity Huffman.
The actress has a couple of deals with Netflix, but they took their time with making any decisions.
Netflix has a history of being slow to jump on the let’s-lynch-their-careers bandwagon.
Their slow-roll probably depends on how much money they’ll lose or the star status of the celebrity.
This was evident when they took months to can actor Danny Masterson when he was faced with multiple rape allegations.
Eventually Netflix finally made a decision- kinda sorties.
The company has delayed (not cancelled) Huffman’s film Otherhood which was supposed to premiere on April 29, 2019.
Her second film with Netflix, When They See Us, a mini-series about the Central Park Five, has not been postponed and is scheduled to be released in May of 2019.
Huffman has since deleted all her social media accounts as well as her parenting website What the Flicka?.
In Laughlin’s case, Hallmark’s rush to judgment may also have had something to do with how she presented herself at the first court hearing.
It was very un-Hallmark like.
Laughlin appeared to be defensive and combative while Huffman kept her head down and sat behind other defendants.
Laughlin came dressed to the nines in designer clothes as if she was attending a red carpet event while Huffman dressed down for the occasion like she was hitting the flea markets around town.
Aunt Becky (as she is being referred to on social media) also went on to paint herself as a victim and even blaming others who ran the scam for her downfall.
Of course she has totally forgot about how she was constantly promoting Singer and his services to other rich parents at her country club.
Her attitude and actions may have also been the reason why Netflix and the production team of Fuller House dealt with her so quickly while taking their time when deciding what to do with Huffman.
It also most likely has something to do with Laughlin's image as well as the shows she has based her career around; that they are marketed under a certain image-one of wholesomeness.
Recently, Laughlin and her husband stated that they were manipulated into paying the money and becoming participants in the scam; that they knew they were breaking some rules, but not any laws.
She has also stated that they were unaware that employees were going to be bribed.
Whatever hack they are getting their advice from has failed to mention that not knowing or understanding a law isn’t a justifiable defense; that there are a lot of people serving significant time in prison for breaking the law that they didn’t know was a law.
The couple believes that once the judge hears this, they will be found not guilty.
They better hope that this judge did not end up going into debt to pay for college.
Or have relatives who were denied admission to those colleges.
Or whose job security is dependent on registered voters.
Or who is a Southie.
Laughlin is treating this situation like it’s a promotional tour for a movie or TV show.
You see her everywhere: church, yoga, signing autographs outside of church, shaking the prosecutor’s hand, car washes where she is seen treating an employee dismissively for leaving a cloth on the top of her car while never making eye contact with him and not even a simple thank-you.
Perhaps she should use this opportunity to show her range as an actress by showing her guilt, humility, anger, fear. Just like regular people who get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Instead she has been busy painting herself and her husband as dim-witted country bumpkins who were fleeced by big bad city folk, stating she was manipulated and that they were just trying to be good parents.
The actress believes that if she controls the narrative-an aggressive way of disseminating the truth as she sees it because she’s the only one who is entitled to do it-she can control the judge and the outcome of the legal proceedings.
And why not? She has successfully controlled the narratives in her daughters' lives for years.
Here’s what Laughlin’s obtuse attitude fails to make her understand:
- A fisherman wants to catch every fish, but some fish are too smart to fall for the bait. Laughlin wasn’t one of those types of fish; it was her greed and arrogance that got her caught. All Singer had to do was cast the line.
- Running around town like you don’t have a care in the world as you continue to flaunt your wealth and lifestyle isn’t helping you. You’re just pissing people off. People who work for a living and live pay check to pay check. People who work two or more jobs and still manage to get their children into college without payoffs. Wealthy people who get their kids into college without ignoring who their children are; that they are not perfect little gems in a sit-com.
One question that a lot of people seem to have is why wasn’t Huffman’s husband, actor William Macy, charged?
It is being said that although his voice was on the first wire-tap, it wasn’t on the second. His handlers are saying he didn’t know.
Really?
Macy and his wife dated for 15 years before marrying in 1997. So, after 27 years together, people are expected to believe he’s some Homer Simpson dope who is clueless to what is going on in his own house?
The picture Mr. Macy has painted in the media over the years as a father doesn’t indicate that he had no idea what was going on; it indicates that he had every bit as much of a role in steering his daughters towards a certain type of life as his wife did.
As far as Macy goes, chivalry isn’t just dead-it’s a dead corpse afloat on some giant iceberg in the Antarctica a couple of miles off the Ross Ice Shelf in the Ross Sea.
What this sounds like is society’s typical response of blaming the mother for everything or putting all the child-related responsibilities on her shoulders while the fathers can just walk away from any life that they helped bring into the world.
The truth is that wealthy parents paying for their children to not even move to the front of the line, but to not even stand in the line has been going on for years.
Regardless to whatever the laws or policies that are in place for regular members of society, the wealthy will always be given access on getting around them.
The system has always been designed to benefit the wealthy; it rewards them for having money and even more for spending that money on the school that goes far beyond paying for tuition and books.
The centuries old practice of wealthy parents or alumni giving money to the school for a building or an endowment so their kids can eventually attend isn’t seen as wrong or unjust not even now with the college scam (or the cute little name it’s been given-Operation Varsity Blues) being brought to the public’s attention.
All this is, in a nutshell, is just privilege for those who feel they are entitled to everything. It proves that if you’re wealthy enough everything is for sale; everything and everyone has a price tag hanging around them.
What is odd is that it didn’t have to happen, and these parents still could have gotten their little darlings into the school of choice in ways that the rich have been legally doing it for years.
Let’s take rapper and businessman Dr. Dre for example.
In March of 2019, Dre posted on Instagram that his daughter, Truly, got accepted into USC without any help; without Dre paying off someone.
However, what he failed to disclose is that he has given $70 million to the college to establish the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.
So how Truly got into this particular college is pretty much a no-brainer.
The wealthy have been gaining access to colleges for their kids for years and some of it is even legal.
Not fair. Not ethical, but legal.
Wealthy parents have either gotten their children in through legacy programs; programs that grant bonus points on a student’s admission assessment, are given extra consideration if their application is rejected, there isn’t as much emphasis on G.P.A.’s or SAT/ACT scores that is placed on other prospective students and these colleges are more lenient when it comes to a wealthy student’s extra-curricular activities they performed in high school.
The catch is that at least one parent has to be an alumni of the college their child is applying to although some colleges also will grant legacy status to grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews as well.
It is unknown whether these alumni parents have to provide proof that this child is theirs, but don’t hold your breath because rich people never, ever lie.
Alumni associations tend to donate a lot of money to the college and the colleges don’t want to lose that money.
Legacy programs at colleges are a pretty big deal. The University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Georgetown and Yale have stated that almost half of their incoming undergraduate classes are legacy students.
This means that means that a lot of students were rejected because they didn’t have the right pedigree.
For wealthy parents who never went to college (as was the case with Dr. Dre), there’s always the option of donating an insane amount of money for a building or even establishing scholarships in their names.
Participating in a scam is another option, just not a good one.
So it just pays to ask why Felicity Huffman and William Macy (whose combined net worth is $65 million) and Lori Laughlin and her husband (whose combined net worth is $100 million) opted not to take the path Dr. Dre took?
They certainly don’t have the equal bank account as the rapper ($820 million), but they could have donated a sizeable amount.
This story has a couple lessons on different levels.
- The
first is a lesson of economic and racial inequality.
If a parent of lesser means or a darker complexion lies about their address in order to get their child into a better school or school district, they could end up in jail and some have ended up there.
Every state in the nation has prosecuted a poor (and often of color) parent for lying about their residency so their child could attend a better school.
Not college, just a school that goes from kindergarten to the 12 grade.
If you’re rich, you get bail and end up sleeping in your mansion surrounded by servants. Many of these parents went to jail.
Perhaps if all schools got the same budget, the same high caliber of teachers, the same extra-curricular activities as the schools attended by rich kids maybe parents wouldn’t be forced to lie.
- The second is a lesson on how the wealthy actually parent their children.
Of course, members of the media tried to put a different type of spin on all of this in order to “explain” how this type of scam could happen because rich people are soooooo misunderstood.
The media came up with an explanation and introduced the theory of these parents being what is known as helicopter parents; parents who hover and become overly involved in every aspect of their children’s lives to the point of making decisions for them.
These parents will all too often feel they have to clear some kind of path for them even when it’s not necessary to do that.
These wealthy parents currently under indictment, in all honesty, are not helicopter parents, but bulldozer parents; they bulldoze every aspect of their children’s lives by removing them out of the decision making process in regard to their own lives often by ignoring any hopes or dreams they may have.
Their actions end up psychologically scarring their children, but it’s okay as long as you have a fancy degree to wave around, right?
This scam and the decision of these parents were not in the best interests of their children, but in their own best interests.
Lori Laughlin is a bulldozer parent.
Her oldest daughter, Isabella Rose, is an actress and Laughlin has controlled every aspect of her acting career by picking out as well as pursuing any roles that Isabella takes or auditions for.
Laughlin ignored the fact that her daughter, Olivia Jade, wasn’t a good student in high school and didn’t apply herself.
There are school administrators who have gone so far to say that Olivia rarely attended, and rumors are flying around that Laughlin paid them off so that her daughter would graduate.
Olivia Jade has gone on her YouTube channel and has said she didn’t want to go to college, but would go in order to attend parties on campus.
So her mom got her into USC in order for Olivia Jade to be an influencer of YouTube by hawking beauty products.
There are some wealthy parents who look at their children as accessories; that who their children are or what they become is as important to them as the kind of car they drive, neighborhoods they live in and designer clothes that they wear.
Laughlin and Huffman are those types of parents. Their child’s failure is not an option.
- The third lesson is that going to college isn’t a right, it’s a privilege and one that has to be earned.
Both these women have stated that they wanted their daughters to have the advantage of a good college education in order to pave their way through life.
That’s not what this is about because there are a lot of colleges in the United States that not only offer a good education, but prepares them for the working world. And none of them are elite schools with expensive tuition bills that are more than most parents make a year.
It also bears to be said that students who follow the rules and get accepted into these schools do so because they have earned that privilege by studying hard throughout their entire high school career.
This means they are more than prepared for the rigorous academic demands that these elite colleges place on them.
All of these colleges that are involved in the scam are highly competitive schools and expect a lot from their students.
In addition, children of wealthy parents have advantages that most other kids don’t have -they have been lucky enough to attend prestigious private schools. Their parents also have the money to pay for expensive tutors if need be.
Apparently, for Huffman and Laughlin, this wasn’t enough. Perhaps if they were capable of being more honest with themselves about their daughters’ abilities (or inabilities) they wouldn’t be in the mess that they are now in.
Anytime news hits the elitist Hollywood community, scores of actors’ rush to their nearest reporter to offer either messages of hope or their fake outrage or disgust, but to also score some publicity for themselves. This scandal was no exception.
The list of those who just had to voice their disgust was almost endless: Julia Roberts, Nicolette Sheridan, Jim Carrey, Dana Delaney, Ross Matthews, Katie Couric, Angela Bassett, Jay Leno, Rockmond Dunbar, and, of course, the ladies from The View and The Talk.
The chorus in many of these statements was, “Everyone knew about buying your kids way into college.”
This is what reeks and it’s a line that is often echoed throughout Hollywood, the previous one being when Bill Cosby was arrested.
People in Hollywood don’t see any problem with screwing over regular people-the same people that buy their music, see their movies and devote their free time to watching their TV shows.
Then, of course, maybe they sat back and watched just to see if these people could get away with it because if they did then others could do it too.
Christy Tiegen (who is only famous for marrying John Legend), Selma Blair and Olivia Munn thought it was funny because they made a joke out of it on social media.
These women are not professional comics. They weren't being funny, just mean.
Apparently, when you’re rich and deluded, seeing people get screwed over because they obey the rules of the system is fucking funny to them.
Let’s remember to make fun of them when their lives are in a free-fall. Selma Blair and your Multiple Sclerosis.
Recently, Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty to the charges against her which is the result of a plea deal.
She made a statement which read: “I am in full acceptance of my guilt, and with deep regret and shame over what I have done, I accept full responsibility for my actions and will accept the consequences that stem from those actions. I am ashamed of the pain I have caused my daughter, my family, my friends, my colleagues and the educational community. I want to apologize to them and, especially, I want to apologize to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices to support their children and do so honestly.”
As fans of the actress grabbed for their tissues over Huffman’s “heart-felt” announcement it’s important to recognize who she didn’t apologize to and why what she’s done is perhaps even more egregious than anything Lori Laughlin actually did.
Felicity Huffman paid a doctor to say that her daughter, Sophia Grace, had a learning disability so that she would be able to be allotted more time to take her SAT’s and even be placed in a separate area that had one proctor, a person Marc Singer already had paid off to change her answers.
Thousands of kids with special needs struggle every day in school to take the mandatory tests. Being allotted extra time isn’t a privilege or a perk; it is a necessity.
To produce false documentation so your normally functioning child can abuse this right that was hard fought to secure by education administrators and special needs activists is way past horrible.
Normally functioning kids, rich or not, have advantages that special needs kids will never have, and in the case of Felicity Huffman, her daughter has already had more advantages than she should have since birth.
Did Huffman apologize to the special needs’ community? Nope.
In her mind she doesn’t think it matters because her daughter was entitled to the special conditions.
So is she really sorry? No. She’s just sorry she got caught.
Most people, once they get arrested, sit back and wait for their trial to begin while discussing their legal strategy with whatever attorney they could afford.
For these wealthy reprobates, the legal system is just another thing they feel that they can control in order to make it work for them.
Some of these parents are working hard trying to circumvent the legal system by getting a new judge assigned to hear their cases.
Apparently, the present judge -Nathaniel Gorton- has a well-earned reputation of imposing tougher sentences than other judges who are more sympathetic towards defendants with large bank accounts.
In other words, they want him removed for doing his job.
These defense attorneys actually had the balls to publicly admit that another judge who was softer on crime would benefit their clients.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, they also want the judge to grant their clients’ permission to leave the state or country to go on vacation. That was a big no.
It has been undetermined what surpirses they have instore for the prosecutor, Andrew Lelling.
Perhaps these defense attorneys should provide their clients with copies of the TV series Law & Order so they can have a better understanding of how the legal system actually works.
They could even have Jack McCoy to come and explain things to them.
Perhaps as these defense attorneys and their clients are looking for ways to bypass a system that should be one of equality, they should also remember how these people are able to afford their lifestyle.
None of them were born swathed in hundred dollar bills and their parents didn't poop gold coins.
They got rich by other people paying for the work that they did or products they sold.
Michelle Janavs, a member of the family who invented Hot Pockets, is under indicment.
Her net worth is roughly $30 million.
Gamal Abdelaziz, former president of Wynn Resorts International and former president of the MGM Grand Casino and Resort in Las Vegas is also under indictment. His net worth is roughly $130 million.
So if this type of scam has been going on for years, why is it such a big deal now?
At one point, Hollywood celebrities and the wealthy were seen as American royalty.
Over the past 35 years, those crowns slowly began to erode as news stories of their misdeeds and questionable behavior flooded homes of the same people who provided for their wealthy lifestyles.
Celebrities like Snoop Doggy Dog, Justin Bieber, Mark Wahlberg, Paris Hilton, Rebecca Gayheart, Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen, Brandy Norwood, Matthew Broderick, Mick Jagger, Barbara Bush, Ted Kennedy, and Vince Neil have all committed crimes (some where a person actually died), but all they got was a slap on the wrist.
As the world continued to turn, the economic gap between the poor and middle class and those of the wealthy grew wider.
The rich got wealthier and found new ways of gaming whatever system they encountered while everyone else had to shell out more money just to survive.
There is no longer any equality for all if there ever was any in the first place.
Regular people are being financially strangled by mounting college debt and often have to work two or three jobs just to pay their bills and keep a roof over their heads.
Meanwhile, the rich continue to live the Life of Riley; a life where the sun only shines on their side of the street.
People are supposed to be treated equally. There shouldn’t be a double standard when it comes to the law.
These criminal charges shouldn’t come down to a slap on the wrist as the defense attorney and judge wink at each other. Every person charged, once they are found guilty, should receive significant jail time just like anyone else would.
People are also saying that the system needs to change, and they are right. Laws need to be improved and loop holes need to be closed.
It’s not just about the administering of the tests or getting rid of them altogether. Legacy programs need to end.
These colleges need to held accountable because there is no way they didn’t know about it.
States and the federal government needs to do away with their tax-exempt status because as these colleges get richer, they are doing it on the financial backs of the students, their families and the communities that surround the college.
It’s time that the wealthy and the colleges pay their fair share; to be held accountable like everyone else.
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