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College admissions scandal: Alleged ruse included a pole vaulter photo and $475,000

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Elisabeth Kimmel, an attorney turned media executive, and her husband, a former San Diego County prosecutor, both attended elite universities. She, Stanford and Yale; he, the Université de Toulouse in the South of France and the University of Southern California.

Years later, it was determined their children would, too.

Federal prosecutors say Kimmel used her wealth to get their daughter into Georgetown University and their son into USC through a “side door” as part of a massive college admissions bribery scandal.

The investigation, unveiled last week, rocked academia and upper-crust America with allegations that parents had paid $25 million in bribes that were funneled to an extensive network of corrupted coaches and administrators in some of the nation’s most respected institutions over a nearly nine-year period.

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The case has shined an unflattering spotlight on the relationship between privilege and higher education, singling out families such as the Kimmels and Hollywood power couples including actress Lori Loughlin and fashion designer husband J. Mossimo Giannulli.

The 204-page FBI affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint against 32 parents depicts a group of successful executives desperate enough — and rich enough — to go to unusual lengths to seal their children’s chances of getting into top-notch schools.

Kimmel, who once owned KFMB stations in San Diego as part of her family-owned Midwest Television Inc., is accused of paying $475,000 to have her children admitted to Georgetown and USC as athletic recruits for sports the children didn’t actually play, according to the complaint.

Neither child is named in the complaint or related indictment.

Full Coverage: Dozens charged in connection with college admissions scheme »

Kimmel’s attorney, Gregory Vega, a former San Diego U.S. attorney who specializes in white collar defense, declined to be interviewed about the allegations.

Kimmel’s husband, Greg Kimmel, is mentioned in the complaint — including an allegation that he signed a $50,000 donation check and participated in a recorded phone call about the scheme — but has not been charged. The U.S. attorney’s office in Boston, where the case is filed, said it did not discuss charging decisions.

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Greg Kimmel left the district attorney’s office, where he prosecuted violent crimes, in 2006 after 13 years and is now president and CEO of Wireless Telematics, a lighting control and monitoring service.

Elisabeth Kimmel’s family fortune traces back to Champaign, Ill., where her grandfather August C. Meyer was a prominent bank chairman. He founded Midwest Television in 1952.

Kimmel followed in her father’s footsteps, first working as an attorney before answering the call to join the family business in 1993. She moved from Los Angeles to San Diego, where her company ran KFMB, including the CBS Channel 8 television station and 760-AM talk radio.

She sold off the stations to Tegna Inc. in a $325-million deal in 2017 and recently became a part-time Las Vegas resident.

Elisabeth Kimmel has served on many boards, including Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits in 2015, the San Diego chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation from 2009 to 2015, the Bishop’s School — the La Jolla prep school her children attended — from 2009 to 2015, and her family’s Meyer Charitable Foundation since 1997.

It was from her family’s foundation that prosecutors said she withdrew $475,000 to secure her kids’ college futures, according to the complaint.

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And until last Thursday, Kimmel also served as a director on the board of First Busey Corp., an Illinois bank, as the second-largest shareholder. Her resignation, reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, came two days after her arrest by the FBI at her La Jolla home. Her father, a longtime director, continues to serve on the board.

The complaint doesn’t say how Kimmel allegedly came into contact with William “Rick” Singer, the mastermind of the scheme who operated a for-profit college counseling and preparation business in Newport Beach known as the Key.

Authorities say Singer took advantage of a so-called “side door” to admissions in which universities allowed coaches to recruit a certain number of students for their athletic skill, often with less regard for their academic or extracurricular attributes. To make it happen, Singer had a number of coaches and administrators in prestigious universities nationwide in his pocket, including an unnamed coach at the University of San Diego, the FBI said.

In most cases, the students had no experience with the sport they were actually being recruited for. It didn’t seem to matter.

In 2012, Kimmel is accused of working with Singer and Georgetown’s tennis coach, Gordie Ernst, on the application process for her daughter — who is actually a field hockey player.

The teen was accepted, and when Singer’s bookkeeper inquired about payment, Kimmel responded: “Thank you, again, for making Georgetown possible” for her daughter.

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Kimmel then paid $275,000 in three installments from the Meyer Charitable Foundation to the Keys’ charitable foundation, Key Worldwide Foundation, or KWF, the complaint states. The checks were signed by Kimmel, according to the court documents.

Authorities say, in turn, KWF compensated the tennis coach with $244,000, doled out over the course of a year.

Kimmel’s daughter graduated Georgetown in 2017. She did not play for the tennis team.

According to her LinkedIn page, the young woman has interned in the family’s various businesses, including at KFMB, served as a congressional intern for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) and now works at Armory Capital, her grandfather’s investment company.

The admissions process did not appear to go as smoothly when it came to Kimmel’s son in 2017.

According to the complaint, Singer asked Laura Janke, a USC women’s soccer coach — who is accused of accepting upward of $350,000 in bribes in partnership with another coach in the admissions scheme — to make a suitable athletic profile for the boy that would show him as a track and field star.

Rather than supply her with an actual photo of the boy, Singer told the coach to find one of a pole vaulter to use.

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The one submitted in his packet is actually an action shot of Jancen Power, a Texas high school student at a state championship in Austin, that appeared in the San Angelo Standard-Times.

The Kimmel boy, on the other hand, had no record of participating in track and field in high school, despite his application calling him a “one of the top pole vaulters in the state of California.”

With the application passed on to Donna Heinel — USC’s senior associate athletic director, also charged as a knowing accomplice in the case — the teen was conditionally accepted.

Two weeks later, the Meyer Charitable Foundation wrote a $50,000 check to the USC’s Women’s Athletics Board. The check was signed by Kimmel’s husband, according to the complaint.

Another $200,000 check, signed by Kimmel, was written from the charity to KWF in February after the boy had been officially accepted, the complaint states.

READ MORE: How an L.A. parent’s tip uncovered massive college admissions scandal »

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Panic struck in July when the son got a whiff of being a track recruit. Kimmel and her husband called Singer to ask how to proceed, according to a wiretap recording of the conversation:

“So [my son] and I just got back from [USC] orientation. It went great,” Greg Kimmel said. “The only kind of glitch was, and I — he didn’t — [my son] didn’t tell me this at the time — but yesterday when he went to meet with his adviser, he stayed after a little bit, and the — apparently the adviser said something to the effect of, ‘Oh, so you’re a track athlete?’ And [my son] said, ‘No.’ ’Cause, so [my son] has no idea, and that’s what — the way we want to keep it.”

Singer told the couple not to worry about it.

Kimmel answered: “So we have to hope this adviser doesn’t start poking around?”

As late as October, in a recorded phone call with Singer, Kimmel said her son was “still in the dark.”

That ended last week with the explosive news of the arrests.

It was unclear how the current students and graduates who were allegedly admitted under the scheme would be affected. Both Georgetown and USC say they are reviewing the case and will be taking appropriate action.

Kimmel is due later this month in Boston federal court, where she faces charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune

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kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

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