Yale University has responded to the nationwide college bribery scandal by rescinding admission to a student who was involved in the scheme.
Prosecutors announced indictments against 33 parents, several athletic coaches, and others on March 12, announcing they’d probed a nationwide network helmed by William “Rick” Singer, who ran a nonprofit known as The Key Worldwide.
Parents would bribe Singer to falsify SAT and ACT test scores and get their children into elite universities under false pretenses. Singer would funnel the money to testing administrators, university workers, and athletic coaches, who helped with designating the children as athletic recruits.
A Yale University spokesman told the Yale Daily News on March 24 that the college conducted an internal review with the assistance of outside counsel and concluded that a female student who had been accepted into Yale was involved in the scheme.
As a result, her admission was rescinded.
The student was not named.
Tom Conroy, the spokesman, said that Yale has no reason to believe any other students or prospective students were involved.
Yale President Peter Salove wrote in a letter to the Yale community several days after the charges were announced, saying the school would be conducting its own review “in order to learn whether others have been involved in activities that have corrupted the athletic recruitment and admissions process.”
According to prosecutors, one of the athletic coaches Singer worked with was Rudy Meredith, who worked as Yale’s head women’s soccer coach, beginning in or about 2015.
“Meredith agreed with Singer and others known and unknown to the United States attorney to accept bribes in exchange for designating applicants to Yale as recruits for the Yale women’s soccer team, and thereby facilitating their admission to the university, in violation of the duty of honest services he owed to Yale as his employer,” prosecutors wrote in a summary of the alleged conspiracy.
Meredith was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services wire fraud as well as honest services wire fraud. Meredith was fired after the charges were revealed. He was scheduled to appear in federal court on March 28.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the man who tipped authorities off to the scandal was Morrie Tobin, who attended Yale.
Sources told the outlet that Tobin was being questioned in an alleged pump-and-dump investment scheme when he offered to provide a tip to federal authorities if they gave him leniency in the case.
Tobin told them that the head women’s soccer coach had asked him for a bribe in return for getting his daughter into the Ivy League school. Tobin agreed to wear a wire to a meeting in a Boston hotel room with Meredith, the former Yale coach, in April 2018. During the meeting, Meredith told Tobin that he could designate Tobin’s daughter as a recruit for the team if Tobin paid him $450,000.
Tobin, still cooperating with federal investigators, also helped get the daughter of another California family into Yale by pretending she was a soccer recruit; that family allegedly paid $1.2 million for the designation.
One of Tobin’s daughters graduated from Yale in 2015 and two others were still enrolled at the school.
NEW w/ @jenniferlevitz: Morrie Tobin didn’t just get solicited for a bribe from Yale’s Rudy Meredith, says person familiar with investigation. He also paid one, says source. https://t.co/t402uYDVzM pic.twitter.com/bMckCbMCZ0
— Melissa Korn (@melissakorn) March 19, 2019
Tobin was not charged in the bribery scheme.
The Yale spokesman told the Daily News that the university couldn’t comment on the accusation.
Prosecutors also said that Meredith met with another family, naming the prospective student as “Yale Applicant 1,” and arranged for the family’s daughter to be designated as a soccer recruit, falsely describing her as the co-captain of a prominent club soccer team in southern California.
In return, the family paid Singer $1.2 million. Singer paid Meredith $400,000.
