REAL COOL STORIES (week ended 2/8/20)
The former CEO of investment firm PIMCO was sentenced to nine months in prison in the harshest penalty in the recent college admission scandal. Douglas Hodge was also sentenced to two years of supervised release and 500 hours of community service. He also must pay a fine of $750,000.
Last March, US Department of Justice charged 50 people for their alleged roles in the fraud, which involved allegedly cheating on standardized tests or falsifying athletic achievements to increase the chances that the children of wealthy parents would be admitted to elite colleges.
In total there have 15 people plead guilty and been sentenced to date.
Hodge was a “repeat player” in the scheme which started in 2008. Hodge first paid for a Georgetown tennis coach to fraudulently recruit his daughter, making it easier for her to obtain admission to the elite university. The mastermind behind the cheating scheme, Rick Singer, fabricated the girl's tennis accomplishments. For example, the application claimed that she had built a tennis court in a Cambodian jungle.
In 2010, Hodge carried out the same type to secure his son admission to Georgetown, claiming that he was "one of Japan's top youth tennis players" even though he was not competitive in the sport.
In 2013, his younger daughter was admitted to USC with an application that claimed she was "co-captain of a Japanese national soccer team," court documents stated. The next year, he agreed to pay bribes to get his son admitted to USC as a football recruit.
Hodge also tried to use bribes to gain a fifth child admission to Loyola Marymount University, but did not succeed.
It is incredible that Mr. Singer was able to keep the scheme going for over a decade.
Parents want the best for their children, but this is ridiculous to me. My view has always been that a child that goes to a university that they are not qualified for will most likely struggle and fail. Who wins there?
A real, cool story about the wealthy doing crazy things!
UPDATE: The NTSB announced this week that the helicopter in the Kobe Bryant tragedy did not have an engine failure. It appears that the helicopter was within 100 feet of being above the clouds moments before the crash. The final investigative findings will not be released for at least a year.