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Singin’ the Varsity Blues: Developer Robert Flaxman sentenced in admissions scandal
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Bruce and Davina Isackson get probation in ‘Varsity Blues” admissions scheme
Prosecutors say real estate magnate and wife helped them convict dozens of others
Bay Area commercial real estate magnate Bruce Isackson and his wife, Davina, have avoided jail after paying $600,000 to a college consultant to fraudulently get their daughters into UCLA and USC.
Bruce Isackson founded WP Investments, a Woodside commercial real estate investment, development and commercial property management company. The conviction on charges including money laundering forced him to step down from the WP Investments partnership.
The husband and wife each got a year of probation, 250 hours of community service and fines totaling $8,500 at their sentencing in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
They managed to skirt prison by quickly pleading guilty and helping prosecutors nail dozens of others in the Varsity Blues admissions scandal.
Federal prosecutors credited evidence and testimony from the Isacksons with helping to convict dozens of other rich parents, coaches and co-conspirators in the national college admissions case.
They said the Isacksons should serve no additional time behind bars than the one day they spent after their 2019 arrests before they posted a $1 million bond.
“Alone among the parents charged in this sprawling conspiracy, they cooperated promptly with the government’s investigation and provided substantial assistance in its prosecution of their co-conspirators,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
The Varsity Blues case, first announced in March 2019, centered around the work of California-based college consultant William “Rick” Singer, who worked to get unexceptional kids of rich parents into elite universities through fraudulent test scores and athletic profiles.
The 33 parents charged in the case included a Wall Street financier, a Napa vintner, a Palo Alto doctor, and Bay Area food and beverage tycoons, among others.
TV actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, and Loughlin’s fashion-designer husband Mossimo Giannulli, also were charged, as were university athletic officials, among them Stanford’s former sailing coach and corrupt test proctors.
Prosecutors also netted Robert Flaxman, CEO of Costa Mesa-based Crown Realty & Development, who served a month in prison after pleading guilty to mail fraud charges. Miami developer Robert Zangrillo, founder and CEO of Dragon Global, was also charged.
Singer and nearly all the rest have since pleaded guilty. Of the convicted parents, nearly all received prison sentences, including nine months for Douglas Hodge, former CEO of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond manager.
Prosecutors have sought longer sentences for the two parents convicted at trials — 15 months for financier John Wilson and a year for casino magnate Gamal Abdelaziz — in which Bruce Isackson was a star witness.
The Isacksons worked with Singer to get their older daughter into UCLA as a soccer recruit in 2015, even though she didn’t play at a collegiate level, according to prosecutors.
Two years later, they asked Singer to get their younger daughter into the University of Southern California by inflating her test scores and presenting her as a competitive rower though she had no crew experience. They also talked to Singer about a similar deal for their younger son.
The Isacksons sold more than 2,100 Facebook shares to funnel $600,000 through Singer’s sham charity, the Key Worldwide Foundation, purportedly to help educate the poor. Singer used the money instead to pay corrupt test proctors and coaches involved in the scheme.
[San Jose Mercury News] – Dana Bartholomew
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