Ex-Harvard Coach, Parent Charged in $1.5 Million Bribe Case
Ex-Harvard Fencing Coach, Businessman Arrested in College Case
(Bloomberg) -- A former Harvard University fencing coach took more than $1.5 million in bribes from a telecommunications CEO to get his two sons into the Ivy League school, prosecutors said in announcing the pair’s arrest on conspiracy charges.
ITalk Global Communications Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jie “Jack” Zhao allegedly paid the bribes -- among the biggest in the U.S. college admissions scandal -- to Peter Brand both in cash and in kind. He bought the coach a car, paid his mortgage and helped cover tuition for his own son at Penn State, prosecutors claim.
The alleged scheme didn’t involve William “Rick” Singer, the mastermind of the nationwide scam, which has swept up such prominent figures in entertainment and finance as “Full House” star Lori Loughlin and former Pimco chief Douglas Hodge.
But it is part of the government’s high-profile effort “to expose and deter corruption in college admissions,” Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said in a statement on Monday. “Millions of teenagers strive for college admission every year. We will do our part to make that playing field as level as we possibly can,” Lelling said.
The hefty bribe had numerous components, according to prosecutors. At one point, Zhao wrote a check for $32,339 to the Department of Education to pay off a student loan for Brand’s son, an IRS agent said in an affidavit.
Zhao, of Potomac, Maryland, and Brand, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, were charged with conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery and could face as many as five years in prison if convicted.
Zhao is innocent of the charges, his lawyer William Weinreb said.
“Jack Zhao’s children were academic stars in high school and internationally competitive fencers who obtained admission to Harvard on their own merit,” Weinreb said in a statement. “Both of them fenced for Harvard at the Division One level throughout their college careers. Mr. Zhao adamantly denies these charges and will vigorously contest them in court.”
Brand, too, denied wrongdoing.
“The students were academic and fencing stars,” his lawyer Douglas S. Brooks said in a statement. “Coach Brand did nothing wrong in connection with their admission to Harvard. He looks forward to the truth coming out in court.”
Fired by Harvard
Brand was released on a $500,000 bond on Monday afternoon. Prosecutors argued he was a flight risk, as an emigre from Israel who could get a passport from an Israeli consulate, and should have to wear a GPS ankle bracelet. Brooks successfully countered that his client has known he was under investigation and remained in Massachusetts.
Zhao was released on a $1 million bond, according to court records.
ITalk didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on the case against him.
A spokeswoman for Harvard declined to comment on the arrests. The university said in a statement last year that it “was made aware of allegations involving Peter Brand, head coach of fencing” and that “an independent investigation of the matter is now complete, and Mr. Brand was dismissed from his position for violating Harvard’s conflict of interest policy.”
None of the colleges or applicants in the nationwide scandal have been charged.
The alleged plot by Brand, 67, who was head coach of men’s and women’s fencing, and Zhao, 61, involved recruitment to the men’s fencing team. Zhao donated more than $1 million to a fencing charity operated by an unnamed co-conspirator, who lives in Virginia and is cooperating with prosecutors, according to a court document. The charity then gave $100,000 to a foundation run by Brand and his spouse, the IRS agent said.
In an email following the admission of his older son to Harvard in 2013, Zhao sent the fencing coach a copy of the acceptance letter, along with a message.
“Hi Boss … It is official now,” it read, according to the agent’s affidavit. “I just want to thank you for what you did, really appreciate.”
Brand and Zhao were the subjects of an April 2019 Boston Globe story on Brand’s sale of his home in Needham, Massachusetts, to Zhao for almost $1 million. Zhao sold the house soon afterward at a loss of $324,500. Zhao told the newspaper he wanted his son’s coach to be able to live closer to fencing practice.
$6.5 Million Payment
At Harvard, unlike at some other colleges caught up in the admissions scandal, a coach’s recruitment roster alone isn’t enough to guarantee admission. Recruited student athletes must win approval from an admissions committee of about 40 members. Brand didn’t disclose the payments when he recruited Zhao’s sons, according to the government.
Conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery carries a sentence of as many as five years in prison, although U.S. sentencing guidelines include numerous factors that can temper the statutory sentence.
Most of the bribes to college athletic coaches in the case have been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The biggest alleged so far was $6.5 million the U.S. says the chairman of a Chinese pharmaceutical company and his wife paid to win their daughter’s admission to Stanford University. The parents weren’t charged.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.