Key college admissions scandal figure will cooperate with feds

The L.A. Times reports:

The head of a West Hollywood private school where dozens of wealthy parents allegedly had their children’s SAT and ACT exams fixed signaled on Tuesday that he would plead guilty and cooperate with investigators, a blow to parents who have maintained their innocence in the college admissions scandal.

The plea is a coup for prosecutors, who are likely to use the administrator to support their argument that William “Rick” Singer and his clients were entwined in a criminal conspiracy to get their children into elite colleges.

Igor Dvorskiy, director of the West Hollywood College Preparatory School, will plead guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering no later than Nov. 20, according to a plea agreement filed Tuesday in federal court. He has agreed to cooperate with the government and testify at trial, if called. Melissa Weinberger, an attorney for Dvorskiy, declined to comment.


In signing a plea deal, Dvorskiy, a resident of Sherman Oaks, acknowledged he took bribes from Singer, the Newport Beach consultant at the heart of the admissions scandal, and in turn allowed a test-fixing fraud to be perpetrated for years at his school.

Singer would direct his clients — wealthy parents from the Westside of Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Manhattan and elsewhere — to register their children to take their SAT or ACT exams at Dvorskiy’s school. There, Mark Riddell, Singer’s Harvard-educated accomplice, would correct the children’s answers after they took the test, or tell them which answers to bubble in.

In a call recorded by the FBI, Singer explained the test-rigging scheme to Gordon Caplan, the co-chairman of an international law firm. Caplan worried his residence — he lives in Greenwich, Conn. — could raise flags if his daughter took her ACT in West Hollywood.

Wouldn’t the testing agencies wonder, Caplan asked, “Why the hell is somebody living in Greenwich taking it out in California?”

Make up a reason for being in Los Angeles, Singer told him.

“‘We’re going to a — a bat mitzvah,’” Singer instructed Caplan to tell the testing agencies. “Or, ‘We’re going to a wedding. We’re going to be gone that weekend.’”

Caplan’s daughter took her ACT exam at Dvorskiy’s school in December 2018, where it was fixed by Riddell.

Caplan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and will be sentenced Thursday.

You'll want to read the entire article. This scandal isn't going away soon.