Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. The biggest college
Speaker 1: admission scandal in our country's history is about to become
Speaker 1: even bigger as prosecutors investigate more parents, making some parents
Speaker 1: who haven't been charged or even notified so worried that
Speaker 1: they're hiring attorneys already joining me as Robert Mints, a
Speaker 1: former federal prosecutor and a partner at McCarter. In English, Bob,
Speaker 1: The first parents to actually plead guilty are Bruce and
Speaker 1: Davina Isaacson, who admitted they paid at least six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to get their daughters into USC and u
Speaker 1: c l A. The government will seek leniency if they
Speaker 1: provide substantial assistance. How much more can the government learn
Speaker 1: from them when they already have the cooperation of the
Speaker 1: ringleader William Singer. I think they can learn quite a bit, June,
Speaker 1: and I think the government is clearly in cooperation mode
Speaker 1: in that they are looking for additional people to assist
Speaker 1: them in this case. And what I say that, I
Speaker 1: mean not only parents, but also coaches who may have
Speaker 1: been involved in this fraud, because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, they need to rely more on other individuals.
Speaker 1: They cannot let this case rest simply with William Singer,
Speaker 1: who will be attacked by defense lawyers and his credibility
Speaker 1: is in any way dentity that hurts the government's case.
Speaker 1: The fact that they're adding co operators suggest to me
Speaker 1: that this case is only just beginning, and they're going
Speaker 1: to see a significant number of additional indictments and charges
Speaker 1: coming in the near future. So, as matters now stand,
Speaker 1: Bruce Isaacson faces about three years in jail. Davina Isaacson
Speaker 1: faces about two years, a substantial amount of time. Explain
Speaker 1: how the guidelines are working here and how much a
Speaker 1: judge can diverge from those. Yes, well, these are very
Speaker 1: serious charges. These are people who have never had a
Speaker 1: brush with the law before, who are suddenly facing very
Speaker 1: real jail time. As you mentioned, for the husband, about
Speaker 1: thirty seven months and slightly less for his wife. In
Speaker 1: the federal system, there is no succe thing as parole,
Speaker 1: so if they were to be sentenced to those terms
Speaker 1: without cooperation, they would do of that time. Here, though,
Speaker 1: with the cooperation, prosecutors can come in and tell the
Speaker 1: judge its sentencing how much their assistance was of value
Speaker 1: to the government. At the end of the day, the
Speaker 1: judge has the complete discretion whether to sentence them to
Speaker 1: jail time at all, or if he does sentence him
Speaker 1: to jail, how much time that will be. According to
Speaker 1: The New York Times, there are parents who have not
Speaker 1: been contacted by prosecutors but are worried and have already
Speaker 1: hired lawyers. If you were representing one of them, how
Speaker 1: would you advise a client in a situation like that,
Speaker 1: Contact prosecutors and see what you can do, or lay
Speaker 1: low and wait. That is a really interesting question. You
Speaker 1: can be certain that there are parents in California in
Speaker 1: other places of the country who are spending many sleepless
Speaker 1: nights pondering that very question, trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: they should do. They know that they had contact with Singer.
Speaker 1: What they don't know is whether or not any of
Speaker 1: their conversations with him may have been recorded, may have
Speaker 1: been picked up on these wire taps, and if that's
Speaker 1: the case, what do they do. Do they lay low
Speaker 1: and hope that maybe the government will simply pass over
Speaker 1: them and charge other people, or do they step forward
Speaker 1: and try to cut a deal. There's no real answer
Speaker 1: to that question. That's really an individual issue that they
Speaker 1: will have to decide when they talk to their lawyers
Speaker 1: about how they want to roll the dice here. Now,
Speaker 1: target letters have been sent out to some students, and
Speaker 1: when we've talked before, it's been like, well, the students
Speaker 1: are probably won't be charged, but why if they're trying
Speaker 1: to send a message, why not charge some of the
Speaker 1: students who cooperate in the scheme. Why? I think that's
Speaker 1: still a possibility. You typically don't send out target letters
Speaker 1: if you don't intend to charge those individuals. It does
Speaker 1: put pressure on the parents, certainly if they have to
Speaker 1: not only consider their own freedom, but now the freedom
Speaker 1: of their children. So that's one value in sending out
Speaker 1: those letters. But I think they also may find some
Speaker 1: students out there who clearly knew what was going on,
Speaker 1: who knew what their parents were doing, who knew what
Speaker 1: their parents were paying for. Perhaps those who were involved
Speaker 1: in the in the part of the scheme that had
Speaker 1: to do with posing as an athlete, but in fact
Speaker 1: they weren't athletes. If they can find cases where the
Speaker 1: evidence is particularly strong, it's possible we may see the
Speaker 1: government charging students as well as parents and coaches. Here.
Speaker 1: Yale has rescinded the admission of a freshman whose parents
Speaker 1: paid one point two million for her admission, and Stanford
Speaker 1: rescinded the admission of a Chinese student whose parents paid
Speaker 1: a whopping six point five million. But what about the
Speaker 1: students who have already received diplomas and didn't know about
Speaker 1: the scheme? It could the could the schools take away
Speaker 1: their diplomas well. The schools are clearly looking into these
Speaker 1: issues for a host of reasons. They have reputational issues
Speaker 1: here that they're concerned about, and they want to make
Speaker 1: sure that there was no further wrongdoing by anybody else
Speaker 1: on the inside, because part of this scheme that is
Speaker 1: so troubling to the schools is not only did it
Speaker 1: involve these educational consultants, but there was a lot of
Speaker 1: activity on a lot of culpability on the part of
Speaker 1: coaches inside these universities who accepted bribes in order to
Speaker 1: create these false athletic profiles. For students, So schools will
Speaker 1: take a close look at that, to the extent that
Speaker 1: they're looking at students who may have already graduated, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a lot that they can do at
Speaker 1: this point, but probably be looking more at students who
Speaker 1: are at the school right now, because they can still
Speaker 1: take action by dismissing those students if they find that
Speaker 1: their admission was in somehow, in some way tainted by
Speaker 1: this kind of fraud. Now, speaking about that, there's a
Speaker 1: federal class action suit on behalf of qualified rejected students
Speaker 1: accusing eight of the schools of negligence, saying that missions
Speaker 1: process was warped and rigged by fraud. Is that a
Speaker 1: tough case to make? I think that is a bit
Speaker 1: of anfl case. Uh. The government has portrayed the schools
Speaker 1: here as victims, putting aside the fact that there may
Speaker 1: have been some people on the inside of these universities
Speaker 1: that played a role. Innus people in the admissions process
Speaker 1: do not seem to have been involved, and so I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be difficult to make that case stick.
Speaker 1: They really have to show that the admissions process was
Speaker 1: so tainted across the board that each of these individuals
Speaker 1: who applied what we're in some way damaged by this
Speaker 1: fraudulent scheme. So, you know, Bob, as far as one
Speaker 1: of the things, I've been curious the the uh the
Speaker 1: students who got in on the fake scholarships, the athletic scholarships,
Speaker 1: and their their faces were photoshopped into ports, into pictures
Speaker 1: within their sport, and they're alleged sport and it seems
Speaker 1: like that's something that easily can be checked out by
Speaker 1: a school or should be maybe you know, whether or
Speaker 1: not there on the teams they say they are. Well,
Speaker 1: I do think schools are going to be looking at
Speaker 1: how this could have happened. Even with the culpability if
Speaker 1: some of these insiders, some of these assistant coaches who
Speaker 1: were involved, it certainly suggests that there was not the
Speaker 1: type of scrutiny and verification that should have been going
Speaker 1: on here to have allowed this to have gone on
Speaker 1: for so long, involving so many different students over many years.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Bob. That's Robert Mintz is a former
Speaker 1: federal prosecutor and head of the white collar practice at
Speaker 1: McCarter and English. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law podcast.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: and on bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. I'm June Brosso.
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