Chinese teenager Sherry Guo’s parents paid US$1.2 million to get her into Yale. So why haven’t they been charged in US college admissions scandal?
- Admissions consultant William ‘Rick’ Singer wrote fake application describing Guo as a top-notch soccer player and bribed US coach to submit it
- Family’s lawyer James Spertus says they were duped by ‘bad actor’ exploiting language barriers and their unfamiliarity with US higher education system
Sherry Guo came to California five years ago, a teenager from China with dreams of attending an elite university.
Her lawyer does not dispute she got into Yale through the machinations of William “Rick” Singer, a Newport Beach consultant who defrauded the Ivy League school and similarly selective universities with bribes, rigged tests and bogus accolades.
Singer fashioned a fake application for Guo that described her as a top-notch soccer player, which was submitted to Yale by a soccer coach who took a US$400,000 bribe. Once she was admitted, Guo’s family paid US$1.2 million to Singer and a charity he used to launder the bribes and other illicit funds.
But unlike dozens of parents swept up in the college admissions scandal, federal prosecutors have not alleged that Guo or her parents committed a crime in paying Singer – the scheme’s confessed mastermind – the seven-figure sum.
Guo’s Los Angeles lawyer, James Spertus, has offered a novel explanation for why they have not been charged. He says Guo’s parents forked over the US$1.2 million without a trace of unlawful intent, duped by a “bad actor” who exploited language barriers and an unfamiliarity with the US higher education system to lure them into his con unwittingly.
