Mark Riddell arrives at federal courtroom in Boston on April 12, 2019. (AP Picture/Charles Krupa)
BOSTON --
A adorned former water polo coach on the College of Southern California was discovered responsible Friday within the sprawling faculty admissions bribery scandal.
A federal jury in Boston convicted Jovan Vavic of fraud and bribery. He declined to remark after the listening to and left courtroom together with his household.
Vavic, 60, who guided USC's males's and girls's water polo groups to 16 nationwide championships, obtained about $250,000 in bribes for designating unqualified college students as water polo recruits so they may attend the elite Los Angeles faculty, prosecutors stated.
Vavic's protection argued he was simply doing what he might to lift cash for his dominant, championship-winning program as athletic officers on the faculty had demanded.
In addition they maintained by no means lied, by no means took a bribe and was a sufferer of USC's want to guard its status and canopy up a “pervasive tradition” of accepting rich college students who might present donations windfalls.
The college, which fired Vavic after his 2019 arrest, has careworn its admissions processes are “not on trial.”
Almost 60 individuals, together with rich and well-known dad and mom in addition to faculty coaches and athletic directors had been charged within the Operation Varsity Blues case, together with “Full Home” star Lori Loughlin and her dressmaker husband Mossimo Giannulli.
Additionally Friday, a decide is scheduled to condemn Mark Riddell, a former Florida prep faculty administrator paid handsomely to take faculty entrance exams for rich college students looking for admission to elite universities.
The Harvard graduate, who emerged as a key determine within the wide-ranging scandal, admitted to secretly taking the ACT and SAT rather than college students, or correcting their solutions.
Riddell, who had been cooperating with federal authorities in hopes of getting a lesser sentence, pleaded responsible to fraud and cash laundering conspiracy prices in April 2019.
U.S. Lawyer for Massachusetts Rachael Rollins' workplace, in a submitting forward of Friday's listening to, requested the decide to condemn Riddell to 4 months in jail. Riddell's attorneys, in their very own sentencing memo, argued for one to 2 months in jail, saying he was neither the ringleader of the scheme nor a college insider, just like the coaches and faculty directors implicated.
Riddell oversaw faculty entrance examination preparation at IMG Academy, a college in Bradenton, Florida that payments itself because the world's largest sports activities academy.
Authorities say the admissions advisor on the middle of the scheme, Rick Singer, bribed check directors to permit Riddell to fake to proctor the exams for college kids so he might cheat on the checks. Singer sometimes paid Riddell $10,000 per check to rig the scores, prosecutors stated.
Riddell, who was fired from IMG Academy, made greater than $200,000 by dishonest on over 25 exams, prosecutors stated.
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