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Stanford Sailing Coach May Face 13 Months in Prison Over Bribes

Stanford Sailing Coach May Face 13 Months in Prison Over Bribes

(Bloomberg) -- The former head sailing coach at Stanford University may face 13 months in prison for taking bribes to get students accepted as athletic recruits even though they weren’t competitive sailors.

John Vandemoer is scheduled to be the first coach to be sentenced in the college admissions scandal that has exposed widespread cheating by wealthy parents to get their children admitted to prestigious universities across the U.S.

Stanford Sailing Coach May Face 13 Months in Prison Over Bribes

"His actions not only deceived and defrauded the university that employed him, but also validated a national cynicism over college admissions by helping wealthy and unscrupulous applicants enjoy an unjust advantage over those who either lack deep pockets or are simply unwilling to cheat to get ahead," federal prosecutors said in their sentencing memorandum filed Friday in federal court in Boston.

The government lawyers said a meaningful term of incarceration is needed to deter others and to restore confidence in the college admissions process.

Vandemoer was introduced to the mastermind of the admissions scheme, Rick Singer, in 2016 and agreed to designate a student from China as a sailing recruit. Singer created a falsified sailing profile for the student. In exchange, Singer’s "sham" charity donated $500,000 to the university’s sailing program. That money came from a $6.5 million payment the student’s parents had made to the charity.

It turned out to be too late in the recruiting season to obtain a slot for the student to be admitted as a sailing recruit, but the student got admitted through the regular admission process. Vandemoer agreed to repeat the scheme with another student the following year, but that student ended up going to Brown University.

Singer began cooperating with the government last year and prosecutors recorded a number of phone calls in which Vandemoer agreed to help get another student admitted as a sailing recruit even though she wasn’t an actual sailor.

In his own sentencing memorandum, Vandemoer said he deeply regrets his actions and stressed that he didn’t pocket any money himself. He asked the court to spare him any prison time and sentence him to probation only.

To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg, Carlos Caminada

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