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I watched the college admission scandal articles go by earlier in the week without much interest. Today I read College admissions scheme: How Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin allegedly participated, but I am not clear what the issues are, and what laws were broken by Lori Loughlin and friends. A copy of the indictment was not provided with the stories I visited.

Naively, making donations to universities and non-profits to gain favorable treatment has been going on for 200 years in America. That is how the university system and fund raising works. I'm also not clear who the victims are. Are there competitive rowers who claimed they lost admission because of Loughlin and friends?

My first question is, what exactly was the crime that Loughlin and friends committed? Surely it cannot be illegal to proffer gifts to universities and charities.

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  • Something else I am interested in (but not related to law): how well or poorly did the students do in their classes? That is important to me, and I would be disappointed to learn the students are not performing as expected.
    – jww
    Mar 17, 2019 at 9:39
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    Maybe you should post the question about how well students did in Politics or Academia.
    – Paul Johnson
    Mar 17, 2019 at 10:13
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    The payments weren't being made to universities. The money was going into the pockets of coaches in exchange for them lying to their employers.
    – cpast
    Mar 17, 2019 at 18:03
  • The indictment and related documents can be found at justice.gov/usao-ma/… (scroll to the bottom of the page for PDF links). This may answer some of your questions.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Mar 17, 2019 at 19:43
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    @Dale - I think your edits are incorrect. Equitable administration of the law is a doctrine in the US. An example of a politician's abuse is warranted for the question that was removed.
    – jww
    Mar 18, 2019 at 0:46

2 Answers 2

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From the link, it appeared that:

  1. Payments were made so that exam answers would be corrected before marking
  2. Payments were made to have an athletic offer extended for a person who would not otherwise qualify.

Fraud and bribery are both applicable crimes. Victims are not necessary for either crime.

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    Or rather, explicit identifiable victims are not required; society collectively suffers from this level of dishonesty and trickery.
    – user4657
    Aug 10, 2019 at 21:58
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What they're currently being charged with:

conspiracy to commit mail fraud: in this case, an agreement between two or more parties(people) had been entered into, to defraud another.

honest services fraud

It's important to remember that these are the current blanket charges against the 50+ people that were apart of this scheme to bribe colleges.

Prosecutors are exploring future charges for SOME of the people involved.

Other charges that prosecutors have said they're exploring:

racketeering conspiracy: under the RICO laws

conspiracy to defraud

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