UCLA Soccer Coach Sentenced in Varsity Blues Scandal
How do rich kids get into prestigious universities when they can’t meet highly competitive admissions standards? A few hire “admissions consultants,” who bribe coaches to arrange acceptances through athletic admissions procedures, which are generally less rigorous than the norm. One such soccer coach took the bribes and is now headed to prison.
Jorge Salcedo, the coach of the UCLA men’s soccer team from 2004 to 2019, was sentenced to eight months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani on March 19. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery. His sentence also included one year of supervised release and $200,000 in forfeiture for his role in the college-admissions-sports-bribery and fraud scheme known as “Operation Varsity Blues.” Prosecutors had requested an 18-month sentence.
The former coach arranged soccer scholarships for kids who had never played the sport but had wealthy parents. He provided phony transcripts and inflated standardized test scores to university admissions officers, which came from Willian “Rick” Singer, a self-proclaimed “admissions consultant.” When university officials questioned the applicants’ athletic prowess, Salcedo fabricated their histories and even falsely stated that said he had seen one of them play in China.
Salcedo, 48, first became involved in the federal programs-bribery scandal in 2016, when he worked with Singer and Ali Khosroshahin, a former women’s soccer head coach at the University of Southern California, to admit Lauren Isackson, the daughter of Bruce and Davina Isackson, to UCLA. The daughter’s phony documents and the sham history of her soccer prowess excellence got her admitted as a soccer team walk-on. Salcedo got his first $100,000 payment. The daughter never played, although she was listed as a midfielder on the team’s 2017 website.
Isackson, who is the head of WP Investments, a real estate firm in the Bay Area, and his wife were the first “Operation Varsity Blues” parents to plead guilty. He was accused of giving Singer 2,150 shares of Facebook stock worth $251,249 in order to help his daughter get into UCLA.
Two years and another $100,000 later, Salcedo collaborated with Singer and Khosroshahin again to recruit the son of another of their clients to join the UCLA men’s soccer team. Salcedo falsely reported that he had seen the young man play in China and arranged a 25% scholarship. Xiaoning Sui, the student’s mother from British Columbia, was arrested in Spain in May 2020 and spent five months in a Spanish prison. When she returned to the U.S., she was allowed to go free due to the time she had already served abroad. The judge said she had already been adequately punished.
A third bribe-for-admission was proposed, but that student went to a different school. Singer and Khosroshahin have pleaded guilty. They have not yet been sentenced, but Singer told prosecutors that he had recorded his phone calls with parents and coaches. He is expected to be a key witness in future trials.
Although Salcedo has no connection to Massachusetts, cases are being tried there because prosecutors from that state were the first to lead the investigations. There were several Boston connections, including two of Singer’s client-defendants, and fake test scores submitted to Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern University. Last year, defendant actress Lori Laughlin and others moved to have federal charges dropped because neither they nor Singer live in Massachusetts. They argued that their constitutional rights to be tried where the crimes were committed must be honored, rather than deferring to the “government’s venue preferences,” their motion said. It was denied.
Salcedo was placed on leave when the first indictments were announced last March 12, and he resigned nine days later, a UCLA spokesperson told The Daily Bruin, the campus paper.
During the sentencing hearing via videoconference, Salcedo told Judge Talwani that he got involved in the pay-for-admission scheme because he had purchased a house he couldn’t afford. AP quotes him saying, “I am a different man than I was two years ago and I will never make decisions like this again.”
Salcedo is the third Varsity Blues coach sentenced thus far. University of Texas at Austin tennis coach Michael Center received six months in prison, and John Vandemoer, a former sailing coach at Stanford, received a single day.
According to the website for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, there are currently 57 defendants involved in the wide-ranging case. Parents, coaches and administrators were charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit honest services mail and wire fraud, which is defined in the U.S. Code as “a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”
More than 40 people including celebrities Felicity Huffman, Loughlin, and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli have already been sentenced, with prison terms ranging from a day to nine months. Ten athletics officials are among those charged.
This week, Netflix began broadcasting a new documentary entitled, Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal.
