Tired of being bombarded with stories about ethically challenged college basketball coaches attempting to bribe financially challenged players with fairly moderate amounts of money to sign with their Big State U's?
Need a new cesspool to follow?
Welcome to One-Percentgate. Or as the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston is calling it, Operation Varsity Blues.
According to the FBI and federal prosecutors, 50 people - including college coaches, actresses and CEOs - collectively coughed up $25 million to gain admittance for their children to such elite universities as Georgetown, Stanford, Southern Cal, Texas, UCLA, Wake Forest and Yale.
You know the One-Percenters. They're those insufferable souls who are are among the top 1 percent of wage earners in this country and receive (supposedly) 99 percent of the tax breaks. Slumming it for these folks is dinner at Outback and two nights' lodging at a Marriott Courtyard. They'd rather be audited by the IRS than buy so much as a quart of milk from any grocery but Whole Foods. When their car needs an oil change, they trade it in for a new one.
Or as U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling described those who forked over anywhere from $200,000 to $6.5 million to guarantee their children's college admission: "These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege."
Now the Fraudulent Fifty will face charges ranging from conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud to racketeering conspiracy.
Nevertheless, to borrow a line from indefinitely suspended LSU basketball coach Will Wade regarding his alleged money offer to recruit Javonte Smart, agreeing to pay $200,000 to $6.5 million just to get your kid admitted to a school is certainly one "strong-ass offer."
Talk about your desperate housewives. Actually, former "Desperate Housewives" star Felicity Huffman is one of those charged in the scandal, along with Lori Loughlin of "Full House" fame. Maybe Loughlin's next project can be a reality show called "Big House."
So how did this scheme to fraudulently admit the offspring of the One-Percenters work?
Call it both simple and complicated, sort of like why billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft chose to twice drop by a two-bit Florida massage parlor before boarding his private jet for the Super Bowl.
At the center of the scam was one William "Rick" Singer, who, according to The Associated Press, "operated Edge College & Career Network, a for-profit college counseling and preparatory business in Newport Beach, California."
From that front he would seek out college coaches willing to accept bribes from parents determined to get their children into elite schools. Former Yale women's soccer coach Rudolph "Rudy" Meredith already has pleaded guilty and reportedly helped the government build the case against Singer and seven other coaches, as well as Southern Cal senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel.
It wasn't as simple as money changing hands, however. An elaborate cheating system for ACT and SAT tests also was in play, with a third party from Florida - Mark Riddell - either secretly taking the tests for the One-Percenters' children at testing locations in Houston and Los Angeles, or later replacing their answers with his own.
Parents paid from $15,000 to $75,000 for this service only, with Riddell reportedly receiving $10,000 a test.
Then there was Meredith, who once allegedly altered a prospective student's profile and falsely identified her as co-captain of an elite club soccer team in Southern California, even though she never played competitive soccer. According to the Feds, once the student was admitted to Yale, Singer mailed Meredith a check for $400,000. Months later, the student's relatives paid Singer $1.2 million in multiple installments.
All this for a school that cost around $75,000 a year for tuition, room and board.
If nothing else, all of this underscores how much less clout many of the nation's One-Percenters may now have with elite university administrators. In the old days, if Biff and Bitsy didn't perform well enough at Silver Spoon Prep to earn a place in Hah-vad or Yale, Mumsy and Daddy would simply build the college a new library wing or lacrosse field and the kid was in.
Apparently being one of the nation's 11 million millionaires just isn't as special as it used to be. Especially when it can now allegedly cost as much as $6.2 million just to secure a fake athletic scholarship, which hopefully comes with a fake workout schedule, since it would be a shame to have to pay $6.2 million to sweat profusely.
At least these faux scholarship athletes aren't likely to complain about how they should be paid more than a scholarship, free food, cool athletic gear and airline miles for playing a kid's game. They, or at least their parents, obviously were grateful for them to get an elite education they couldn't have received by ethical means.
Never fear, though, that the Feds are the only ones on top of One-Percentgate.
On Tuesday the NCAA released a statement that it was more than a little interested in investigating allegations of students masquerading as athletes as opposed to its decades-long indifference to athletes masquerading as students. Wrote college athletics' governing body: "The charges brought forth today are troubling and should be a concern for all of higher education. We are looking into these allegations to determine the extent to which NCAA rules may have been violated."
I feel better already. Don't you?
Contact Mark Wiedmer at miedmer@timesfreepress.com