Former U.S.C. Official Sentenced to Six Months for Role in College Admissions Scandal

Dr. Donna Heinel was the “Inside Person” at U.S.C. who collaborated with William Singer in his scheme dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues.” The idea was to get students fraudulently admitted to U.S.C. as athletic recruits, at a substantial cost in bribes from the parents. In doing so Dr. Heinel abused her role as administrator and gatekeeper for athletic recruits at the University and corrupted the water polo and soccer coaches who went along with the scheme. But the damage doesn’t end there. She is also responsible for two young children! Former U.S.C. Official Sentenced to Six Months

The result is she now begins a sentence of six months in prison, forfeiture of the $160,000.00 she had received in bribes and the title of convicted felon! Nice job Donna!

The question is, why would an intelligent person allow herself to be caught up in such an absurd deception?  How could it not become obvious at some point that people were showing up as athletes who were not qualified to be playing on a High School team, let alone a top college team?

I would venture to guess that Dr. Heinel had used the words “What Goes Around Comes Around,” when pointing our someone else’s folly any number of times. Yet in this case she not only jumped into a hopelessly complex and illegal scheme, but also brought others with her. The question screams out to be heard…”What Was She Thinking???” Must have been that she thought she was safe because the parents and kids wouldn’t tell, right? And the coaches weren’t a problem since they were in on it and being paid off too!  Right? What could go wrong?

The challenge is that we are not properly educated that while we may think nobody is watching, there is a “Law of Cause & Effect” taking note that responds to us according to our choices. Dr. Heinel now knows that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/college-admissions-scandal-heinel-usc.html?smid=em-share

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BOSTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – A former athletic official at the University of Southern California was sentenced on Friday to six months in prison for her role in a nationwide fraud and bribery scheme that helped wealthy parents secure spots for their children at top colleges.

Donna Heinel, the school’s former senior associate athletic director, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston for helping get about two dozen students admitted as fake athletic recruits in exchange for money.

Prosecutors had sought two years in prison. While Talwani said her guilty plea to a single honest services wire fraud count in 2021 precluded such a long sentence, she rejected Heinel’s request for probation, citing her “dishonesty.”

Heinel is among 53 people who have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial following an investigation dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues” that ensnared business executives and celebrities and exposed inequalities in U.S. higher education.

At its center of the scandal was William “Rick” Singer, a college admissions consultant who was sentenced on Wednesday to 3-1/2 years in prison for facilitating cheating on college entrance exams and funneling money from parents to university coaches to secure spots for their children as sports recruits. read more

Prosecutors said Heinel, 61, was one of the most prolific participants in the scheme by submitting information to a USC admissions committee from Singer about multiple students that misled it into believing their applications came from coaches who had not in fact not recruited them.

Prosecutors said she did so from 2015 to 2019 in exchange for nearly $1.28 million from Singer and his clients to USC accounts — donations Heinel said she secured to protect her job and meet escalating fundraising expectations.

“There was just so much pressure to raise money at my institution, and the amount just kept getting bigger and bigger,” Heinel said in court. “They talked about feeding the beast.”

Prosecutors said Heinel also personally pocketed $160,000 after she and Singer entered into “sham” consulting agreement. She has agreed to forfeit that money, though defense lawyer Nina Marino said, adding Heinel did not view it as a bribe at the time.

Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Aurora Ellis

Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about

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A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.  

The stable, positive, non-preachy and objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre.

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“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite. – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC

Former U.S.C. Official Sentenced to Six Months for Role in College Admissions Scandal

Former U.S.C. Official Sentenced to Six Months for Role in College Admissions Scandal

…And here is a genuine story about how even minimal effort to bring comfort to another human can result in outsized and wonderful results. How different the world might seem to many if that kind of true effort actually ran wild! It is a thought worth considering. It is also a siren call to each of us!

New research shows small gestures matter even more than we may think.

Colombo Family Crime Boss and 12 Others Are Arrested, Prosecutors Say

An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accuses the organization of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort a labor union.

Credit…Jesse Ward

 

For two decades, the leadership of the Colombo crime family extorted a Queens labor union, federal prosecutors said — an effort that continued unabated even as members of the mob clan cycled through prison, the family’s notorious longtime boss died, and as federal law enforcement closed in.

Over time, what began as a Colombo captain’s shakedown of a union leader, complete with expletive-laced threats of violence, expanded into a cottage industry, prosecutors said, as the Colombo organization assumed control of contracting and union business, with side operations in phony construction certificates, marijuana trafficking and loan-sharking.

On Tuesday, 11 reputed members and associates of the Colombo crime family, including the mob clan’s entire leadership, were charged in a labor racketeering case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

All but two of the men were arrested Tuesday morning across New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said. Another was surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday; another defendant, identified as the family consigliere, remained at large, prosecutors said.

The indictment accuses the Colombo family of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort an unnamed labor union that represented construction workers, using threats of violence to secure payments and arrange contracts that would benefit the crime family.

The charges are an ambitious effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down one of the city’s five Mafia families. In addition to the union extortion scheme, which is the heart of the racketeering charge, the indictment charges several misdeeds often associated with the mob, including drug trafficking, money laundering, loan-sharking and falsifying federal labor safety paperwork.

Detention hearings for the defendants in Brooklyn federal court continued into the evening Tuesday, as they entered not-guilty pleas to the charges; prosecutors had asked the court to keep 10 of the defendants in custody.

“Everything we allege in this investigation proves history does indeed repeat itself,” Michael J. Driscoll, F.B.I. assistant director-in-charge, said in a statement. “The underbelly of the crime families in New York City is alive and well.”

Around 2001, prosecutors said, Vincent Ricciardo — a reported captain in the family, also known as “Vinny Unions” — began to demand a portion of a senior labor union official’s salary. When Mr. Ricciardo was convicted and imprisoned on federal racketeering charges in the mid-2000s, prosecutors said, his cousin continued to collect those payments.

Starting in late 2019, prosecutors said, the senior leadership of the Colombo family became directly involved in the shakedown, which extended to broader efforts to siphon money from the union: for example, manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family, and diverting more than $10,000 each month from the fund to the family.

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Andrew Russo, 87, who prosecutors describe as the family boss, is accused of taking part in those efforts, as well as a money-laundering scheme to send the proceeds of the union extortion through intermediaries to Colombo associates. He was among nine defendants charged with racketeering.

Mr. Russo appeared in court virtually from the hospital Tuesday; he is set to be detained upon his release, pending a future bail hearing.

The family’s infamous longtime boss, Carmine J. Persico, died in federal custody in North Carolina in March 2019.

Federal law enforcement learned of the extortion scheme about a year ago, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday; investigators gathered thousands of hours of wiretapped calls and conversations recorded by a confidential witness, wrote the prosecutors, who also described law-enforcement surveillance of meetings among the accused conspirators.

The authorities said they repeatedly captured Mr. Ricciardo and his associates threatening to kill the union official. “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids,” Mr. Ricciardo was recorded saying in June.

On another occasion cited by prosecutors in the memo seeking his detention, Mr. Ricciardo directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.” Prosecutors said his activities were overseen by a Colombo soldier and the consigliere who remains at large.

Much of the activity outlined in the indictment took place while the defendants were either in prison or on supervised release for prior federal mob-related convictions. Theodore Persico Jr., described as a family captain and soldier, was released from federal prison in 2020 and, despite a directive not to associate with members of organized crime, “directed much of the labor racketeering scheme,” prosecutors said.

Mr. Persico, 58, is set to inherit the role of boss after Mr. Russo, prosecutors wrote.

Several of the defendants were named in what prosecutors described as a fraudulent safety training scheme, in which they falsified state and federal paperwork that is required for construction workers to show they have completed safety training courses.

One of the defendants, John Ragano — whom prosecutors say is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family — is accused of setting up phony occupational safety training schools in New York, which prosecutors said were “mills” that provided fraudulent safety training certificates to hundreds of people.

In October 2020, prosecutors said, an undercover law enforcement officer visited one of the schools in Ozone Park, Queens, and received, from Mr. Ricciardo’s cousin, a blank test form and an answer sheet; weeks later, the agent returned to pick up his federal safety card and paid $500.

The purported schools were also used for meetings with members of La Cosa Nostra — the group of crime families commonly known as the Mafia — and to store illegal drugs and fireworks, according to the indictment.

Mr. Ragano wasn’t charged on the racketeering count, although prosecutors also sought his detention pending trial. In addition to the racketeering count, several defendants, including Mr. Ricciardo and his cousin, were charged with extortion, conspiracy, fraud and conspiracy to make false statements.

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

Correction: 

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of people identified in an indictment as members of the Colombo crime family. It is 11, not more than a dozen.