BOSTON – The previous College of Southern California water polo coach was indicted Friday in a university admissions bribery scandal.
A federal jury in Boston indicted Yovan Vavitch of fraud and bribery. He declined to remark after the listening to and left the court docket along with his household.
Prosecutors stated Vavic, 60, who has led the USC males’s and ladies’s water polo groups to 16 nationwide championships, took bribes value $250,000 to recruit ineligible college students as water polo recruits so they might attend an elite faculty in Los Angeles.
Vavic’s protection argued that he was doing what he may to boost cash for his dominant, championship-winning program as the college’s athletic officers demanded. They asserted that he 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 the “mainstream tradition” of accepting rich college students who may make surprising donations.
The college, which dismissed Vavic after his arrest in 2019, confirmed that its admissions processes have been “not underneath trial”.
Almost 60 individuals, together with wealthy and well-known mother and father in addition to faculty coaches and sports activities officers, have 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 about to rule that Mark Riddell, a former prep faculty official in Florida, paid exorbitant sums to take faculty entrance exams to rich college students searching for admission to elite universities.
The Harvard graduate, who emerged as a key determine within the widespread scandal, admitted to secretly taking the ACT and SAT check in lieu of scholars or correcting their solutions.
Riddell, who had been cooperating with federal authorities in hopes of a decreased sentence, pleaded responsible to conspiracy to fraud and cash laundering in April 2019.
US Lawyer Common for the Massachusetts Workplace of Massachusetts Rachel Rollins, in a memo earlier than Friday’s listening to, requested the decide to condemn Riddle to 4 months in jail. Riddle’s attorneys, of their sentencing memorandum, argued for one to 2 months in jail, saying that neither the gang chief nor a college insider just like the coaches and faculty directors have been concerned.
Riddle oversaw faculty entrance examination preparation at IMG Academy, a faculty in Bradenton, Florida, which payments itself as the biggest athletic academy on the earth.
Authorities say this system middle’s admissions counselor, Rick Singer, bribed check directors to permit Riddle to fake to watch college students’ exams so he may cheat on exams. Prosecutors stated Singer was normally paying Riddell $10,000 per check to govern the outcomes.
Prosecutors stated Riddell, who was expelled from IMG Academy, made greater than $200,000 by dishonest on greater than 25 exams.
