In case you live under a rock or you don't seek out news to find pleasure in others' misfortunes, today news broke that all these rich people are being indicted (and publicly shamed) for engaging in incredibly entertaining fraud for purposes of getting their children into Yale and Stanford and etc. Apparently all of these people hired this guy and paid him literally millions of dollars to totally fabricate application materials and bribe people at the schools to get their mediocre kids accepted.
And I know. If we're like being sups woke we're probably not supposed to find any of this funny and instead focus all of our energy on how rich people milk the system and hard-working kids didn't get into these schools because someone else's parents have money and what would Jesus say and stuff. But y'all can go to Oprah for that stuff right now. Because I'm only going to be entertained by this tonight.
So they fabricated exam scores, in some cases paying this 36-year-old man to go take tests for students, and apparently he could get perfect scores, which, WHAT IS THAT MAN DOING WITH HIS LIFE.
But the absolute best thing about this is that these people were legit paying this man to photoshop their children's faces onto pictures of athletes in the middle of sportsball in an effort to lie to these schools about their kid's athleticism.
Man I am dying at the detail in this college admissions cheating scandal that they photoshopped the kids' faces onto actual athletes' bodies to submit pics to schools pic.twitter.com/gNEIjpsUA2— Molly Hensley-Clancy (@mollyhc) March 12, 2019
Like, they couldn't just get their kids to pretend to play a sport for one crappy picture?
There's one exchange in the Affidavit filed with the Complaint, a transcription of a conversation between a dad and the scammer they hired, where the scammer informed the dad he was going to tell a school that this guy's son was a kicker on the football team and the dad was basically like "LOL THAT FAT ASS DOESN'T EVEN GO OUTSIDE" but he has no problem with this plan.
For real. What was going to happen when that kid got to school? Was he going to pretend to be a football player for the rest of his life? There are at least 40 bad movies about this. And now I want there to be at least 40 more.
Also, how much do you love that the dad is like "The way the world works these days is unbelievable" as though he is not the reason that the world is working this way. It's almost impressive how ready he is to pass an indictment on the whole system in the middle of a conversation where he is talking about paying more than the cost of my house to have someone use a photo editing program to lie to academic institutions about whether or not his son plays sports.
In some of the cases the parents didn't even tell the kids they were doing this so some of the conversations between the parents and the scammer are about how to scam the school and the kid separately. In one phone conversation the scammer talks about kids who are not the brightest bulbs on the whatever being surprised that they did so well on the ACT.
There's this one part of the court filings where the scammer guy tells the parent that he needs a writing sample from the kid so the person they are paying to take the test for him can try to match the kid's writing and, well, this is HILARIOUS.
You guys. I cannot stop laughing at the image of this pathetic mother sitting with her pathetic son and trying to get him to write that pathetic note so they can send it to someone they are paying absurd amounts of money to take a test because they don't have any confidence that the son can possibly succeed on his own.
AND I KNOW. WE SHOULD ONLY BE ANGRY AND SAD ABOUT THIS. BUT IT'S ALSO HILARIOUS.
Look. You gotta just go read all 9 million pages of the Complaint and Affidavit. And then pat yourself on the back for not being these people.
I want competing documentaries from Netflix and Hulu about this like yesterday.
P.S. I am very unhappy that Aunt Becky is caught up in all of this. She better not ruin Fuller House for me. THAT was a good show.
~It Just Gets Stranger
You did the Lord’s work here. Thank you. This has made my entire day.
ReplyDeleteI work in higher ed and I cannot stop reading these articles! I mean - I knew some shady stuff happens at times but all of this really has me floored!
ReplyDeleteI mean, I went to a D3 school, so maybe that's the difference, but I was never asked for a photo of me doing any sporting activities when I applied to schools? Does that add to the hilarity of it? I have visions that they submit these pictures and the admissions offices at Stanford and Yale are basically like the Harvard admissions board when they receive Elle Woods's video essay.
ReplyDeleteStudent athletes have to set up a whole profile through the NCAA and have their amateur status approved. It's quite a process.
DeleteMy husband worked at a VERY fancy private school as a college counselor. He only had one or two D1 recruited athletes but he said it was an entirely different process for those kids. Instead of dealing with the admissions office you deal with the coach or the athletic department liaison. Yes the application goes into the admissions office but all questions or calls about application status go through the athletic program - even at the Ivys. And I know coaches often receive videos, there is this entire system of making coaches aware of you as a recruit -- seems like a red flag just to have picture of a kid and not a video. Anyway, as is obvious by this case, my husband said it would be super easy for a coach to be like. "I need this kid" and for the admissions department to not question anything.
DeleteAlso, he said, from personal experience, if he was Aunt Becky's college counselor he would have told her to call the admissions office, say her kid wanted to go to USC and she was willing to donate upwards of $500k and that would immediately have the application considered in a different light. It wouldn't guarantee admission but he has to presume it helps based on what he has seen related to acceptances for certain kids. He doesn't have that job anymore because he was sick of helping rich kids.
These people have all become philanthropists; they have spent exorbitant amounts of money for the entertainment of the world 😂
ReplyDeleteThis! Haaaaaa!!!
DeleteHow I imagine all the photos
ReplyDeletehttps://elderhsquill.org/7556/arts-entertainment/photoshop-masterpieces-display-talent-and-creativity/
OMG a thousand times yes.
DeleteHere's a clickable link (I just learned how to do this): That Gent Mark
DeleteOMG this literally made me spit out my food I laughed so hard.
DeleteYou're the problem here, Eli. Think of this - how much money has Aunt Becky made by you watching Fuller House so many times? That money she has earned from you is what she was paying to the cheater dude. You're basically enabling all of this. I'm very disappointed. (Not that we know what enabling is, Cathy.)
ReplyDeleteOMG MATT AND I FUNDED ALL OF THIS ENTERTAINMENT YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYONEEEE
DeleteI love Cathy so much.
DeleteThis is easily my favorite article on this topic so far. And I have also read the entire internet.
ReplyDeleteForget Aunt Becky. I’m really worried about Abigail (When Calls the Heart).
ReplyDeleteAnd I’m ashamed to admit that’s not even supposed to be funny. As much as this whole things says about her, and it’s wrong, I just don’t want to lose what is literally the only show I watch. Basically I’m selfish.
Yes!!! Abigail! How could she! This is totally something Mayor Gowen would’ve done.
DeleteI'm surprised you don't know that Lori Loughlin *HAD* a contract/agreement/handshake with Hallmark Channel and will no longer be making movies or television shows with them and now WHO WILL RUN ABIGAIL'S CAFE AND BE ELIZABETH'S BEST FRIEND AND LOVE HENRY GOWEN in When Calls the Heart? I can't even ...
DeleteI think if they are convicted they should all be forced to be in the cheesy after school special type dramatization of this whole thing, but not starring as themselves, they have to star as the investigators who busted them, and the investigators get to play the perps. I'd pay money to see that fiasco.
ReplyDeleteI would be snorting and laughing harder if I didn't already know that this is how the privileged also approach our political system, and taxes, etc. I CAN laugh because who cares if you scammed your moron child into Yale, I hope the indictment creates a deeper dive, because this is just the surface. Sorry Aunt Becky.
ReplyDeleteEli, did you realize that whenever you name a story, you always do it in the same, high pitched voice?
ReplyDeleteI'm with you except for the "pathetic mother and pathetic son" part. As the kid, he may not even have *known* what was going on. And as the mother, most mothers want what's best for their kids and will go to great lengths to get it. This was the option available to her and she took it.
ReplyDeleteDon't hate the player, hate the game, yo.