First to be sentenced in admissions scandal is given home confinement

The coach, John Vandemoer, who was accused of taking bribes from a corrupt college consultant, was ordered to spend a single day in jail — time the judge said he had already served — and six months in home confinement as part of two years of supervised release.

Prosecutors had called for a 13-month sentence, and the lighter penalty raised uncertainties about the future of the sprawling case, which has so far brought criminal charges against 50 people, including other coaches, Hollywood actresses and prominent figures from the worlds of law and finance. Yet the outcome of Vandemoer’s case seemed an imperfect indicator of how cases against others may play out.

Unlike other coaches charged in the admissions scheme, Vandemoer, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering, did not pocket any money from the bribes. He negotiated with the college consultant at the center of the scandal to designate students as recruits to the Stanford sailing team even though they were not competitive sailors, giving them an advantage in the admissions process. In exchange, the consultant directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to the school’s sailing program.

Looming over his sentencing were larger questions, about who should be considered most culpable in the cheating scheme and about the role of universities in what had transpired.

In an interview, Vandemoer, 41, said that he had believed that he was helping his team by securing the donations, which would buy new sailboats, in exchange for recruiting students who would be, as he put it, “role players” — that is, supporting players who would come to practices but not be stars or starters in competition.

“In my head, if the role player came with money for the program, that helped the program,” he said. “I thought that was going to be a positive, but I was wrong, and I see that now.”

Since the admissions scheme became public in March, prosecutors have described Stanford and the other universities where they say athletic staff accepted bribes as victims, saying that the schools were cheated out of the “honest services” of their employees and the right to control their admissions process. Several of the universities have echoed the prosecution’s description of them as victims in their responses to the charges.

But the details of what happened at Stanford and some other schools raise questions about whether the universities bear some responsibility for what was essentially the sale of their recruiting slots and whether they could have prevented the fraud by more closely scrutinizing gifts.

Asked about Stanford’s level of responsibility for what happened, Brad Hayward, a spokesman, said, “We are determined to learn everything we can from this experience and ensure that the proper controls are in place to prevent fraudulent efforts like this in the future.”

Stanford is the only school where all of the money paid in connection with the scheme — $770,000 in total — actually went to university programs.

At several other schools, at least some part of the bribes reached university accounts, while the rest went to individual coaches or businesses they controlled, prosecutors said. The University of Southern California, for instance, received more than $1.3 million in donations to its athletic programs that prosecutors have said were bribes, according to charging documents. Athletic programs at Wake Forest University and the University of Texas at Austin received smaller amounts, according to prosecutors.

The donations point to troubling pressures in the culture of college sports, where at least some coaches were willing to cross ethical and legal lines to raise money for their teams. Nine coaches were among those arrested in the case.

Rick Eckstein, a professor of sociology and criminology at Villanova University who has written extensively on college sports, said that universities had enabled the scheme by giving athletes preferential treatment in admissions.

“Without that system in place, none of this fraud could have taken place,” he said.

The money donated to the Stanford sailing team included $500,000 from a couple from China who prosecutors say paid William Singer, the college consultant at the center of the scandal, $6.5 million in connection with their daughter’s application to Stanford, according to prosecutors.

The charge against Vandemoer centered on two other students, for whom Singer promised donations if Vandemoer would recruit them. Singer made donations, prosecutors say, though the two students ultimately did not complete their applications to Stanford.

Vandemoer said that he believed at the time that all three students had at least some sailing experience, though he said he did not check the credentials provided by Singer, who has pleaded guilty in the admissions scandal.

As to what Stanford knew about the donations, Hayward, the university spokesman, said that several fundraising staff members knew that all three donations had come from Singer’s nonprofit and also knew the identity of the couple behind the $500,000 donation and that their child had just been admitted to the university. Asked if the fundraising staff members knew that Singer was a private admissions consultant, he said he did not know.

Hayward said Stanford has hired a law firm to conduct a review of its athletic recruitment process, as well as the procedures around the acceptance of gifts for athletic programs.

In the meantime, he said, the university was making changes, including requiring a top athletic official to confirm athletic credentials for each recruited athlete, as well as educating development officers “about the need to know prospective donors as well as their intermediaries and the reason for a prospective gift or pledge.”

Hayward also said that Vandemoer was not the only coach at Stanford to have had contact with Singer. Based on “preliminary inquiries,” he said, “we understand that several coaches were contacted by Singer in recent years. However, thus far we have not identified any coaches, beyond John Vandemoer, who participated in Singer’s fraud.”

Asked about their responsibility in the case, officials from the other universities that received donations in the scheme offered varying responses.

Wake Forest received $50,000 from Singer’s foundation, which prosecutors have said was part of a bribe to the women’s volleyball coach to recruit the daughter of one of Singer’s clients. The coach, William Ferguson, has pleaded not guilty.

A spokeswoman, Katie Neal, said that there was nothing that would have raised suspicion about the gift.

“When Wake Forest received the $50,000, there was nothing to suggest it was anything other than a philanthropic gift to our athletics program from a student’s family,” she said.

The University of Texas received $15,000 from Singer’s foundation and $25,000 that the former men’s tennis coach, Michael Center, said came from an anonymous donor, a spokesman said. The money was used to help renovate tennis facilities. Center has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud.

The spokesman, J.B. Bird, said: “As part of our internal review, we are determining whether the university could have identified or prevented this incident while making sure we have systems in place to prevent the kind of fraud that happened in 2015. The contributions to the tennis facilities had no apparent connection to institutional decisions about admissions, but scrutinizing such donations will be a part of our processes moving forward.”

USC did not respond to questions about the money it received as part of the scheme.

During Vandemoer’s sentencing hearing Wednesday, prosecutors acknowledged that the former coach had not enriched himself personally but argued that he still deserved jail time because he had taken bribes to benefit his sailing team and had damaged Stanford’s reputation.

“He took a spot, and he sold it,” said Eric S. Rosen, a federal prosecutor. Rosen urged the judge to “set the tone,” given the gravity and notoriety of the case.

“If the courts don’t really care, maybe it’s a more of a gray area than a bribe. Then imagine if you’re a kid — the wealthy and powerful get off,” he said. “Is this the message we want to send? That the law applies to some and not to all?”

The defense, by contrast, focused on how Vandemoer had resisted using the money for personal gain and had owned up when approached by authorities. More than two dozen Stanford sailors and parents wrote letters to the judge in support of Vandemoer, who lost his livelihood, his health insurance and more, noted Robert Fisher, one of Vandemoer’s lawyers.

During the hearing, Rya W. Zobel, the federal judge, seemed to voice skepticism of the government’s argument that Stanford had been a victim of what happened. “That’s not his gain,” she said of the coach. “He gave it to the university.”

Her sentence was greeted with relief by Vandemoer’s lawyers.

“I think it is important to have a punishment because it’s too easy to do this kind of thing,” Zobel said. Nonetheless, she added, she did not feel prison time was warranted.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.