You know, as time goes by, and the more I read about this, the more I think Loughlin is right to roll the dice and not to succumb to the pressure from the feds for a guilty plea. What she did was plainly wrong, and it certainly reflects badly on her, but jury nullification is nothing new with celebrities. She was involved in bribery, though I don't know if she actually committed a federal crime, being a resident of California and the money going to USC officials. And I don't know where you could find an individual who was actually harmed here. One might argue that USC accepted one less freshman to accept her daughters two years in a row (though that's not necessarily true), but who are those persons? While colleges insist their admissions numbers are a hard cap -- they're not. A dozen extra bodies mean nothing taking 5,000 kids every year. USC would never reveal who that next person was, even if they could actually determine it. They were accepted as potential recruits, but the crew coach and athletic department knew damned well that Olivia and Isabella would never actually row or cox, so I doubt that any marginal rower missed out here. And the cost and scope of this investigation is pretty staggering. While the feds are all over this, how many gangbangers are shooting at border patrol agents, ferrying illegal aliens and drugs across the border? USC is a private institution, not a state college, and Olivia and Isabella were not relying on federally guaranteed student loans. If Lori and Mossimo claimed charitable deductions on some of this bribery, that is a tax issue and that should be the crux of the prosecution. But since the feds accepted Singer's "charity," that's the IRS' problem, and it seems a little disingenuous for the IRS to go after "donors" to a charity they approved. For Singer, clearly tax consequences, and if these various coaches, administrators, proctors, etc., didn't pay taxes on this shady income, again, they should pay the price.
I think the colleges have the obligation to clean house for their own reputations -- these coaches and admissions people will get fired, if they haven't been. The College Board and other testing institutions certainly have a problem with test administration, but this has been going on for decades. In giving accommodations to those who claim learning disabilities, they've opened up ways to game the system -- I recall the scion of a prominent political family who failed the bar exam in his state twice, then took it a third time in a private room and passed. This was snickered at back in the day, but completely forgotten about years later. But the wealthy have always greased the skids for their children. It just seems to me that spending $250k each to get their girls into USC is like spending $100 for a can of Budweiser. They're free to do what they want with their money, but it could have gone to far better use.