A former University of Southern California soccer coach who took bribes to write bogus athletic profiles for the children of well-heeled parents pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy.
Laura Janke, who was employed as an assistant women’s soccer coach at USC, admitted in federal court in Boston on Tuesday that she was part of a network of coaches and college and test administrators led by William “Rick” Singer, the admitted mastermind of the biggest college cheating case the U.S. has ever brought. Their role was to get the kids into college as recruited athletes, even if they had no history of playing the sport, ensuring admission into elite schools.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Rosen said in court on Tuesday that Janke created almost every phony profile used in Singer’s scheme. She made some of them while at USC and even more after she left the college in 2014, right up to her arrest in March, he said.
Janke has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. While she faces 27 to 33 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, she’ll seek leniency for providing “substantial assistance.” She has agreed to forfeit more than $134,000 she earned in the scheme, according to her plea deal, and to “cooperate fully” with the government, including testifying before “any grand jury, and at any hearing and trial.”
Fifty people, including 33 parents, have been charged in the scheme so far. With her plea Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, Janke becomes the fourth coach to admit wrongdoing, acknowledging that she helped Singer fabricate athletic profiles and other documents to make it look like clients’ children were star athletes. She was indicted in March along with 11 others.
Among the incidents the government alleges in court documents, Singer directed Janke in November 2017 to create a fake profile for the daughter of Toby MacFarlane, a parent from Del Mar, California, who paid Singer $350,000 to get the girl into USC as a purported soccer player.
Janke wrote that the applicant was a “US Club Soccer All American” in high school. MacFarlane’s daughter was then presented to USC for admission as a soccer recruit. After she was accepted, in March 2014, Singer wired $50,000 to a private soccer club controlled by Janke and another defendant, prosecutors said. MacFarlane eventually paid $200,000 to a foundation Singer ran and then directed a $100,000 payment to a soccer charity controlled by Janke and another, according to court documents.
In another incident, Janke wrote a bogus profile for the son of Devin Sloane, another California parent whose son eventually won admission to USC, in this case as a water polo player, in exchange for $250,000. The biography of Sloane’s son boasted he spent summers playing for the “Italian Junior National Team” and played in tournaments in Greece, Serbia and Portugal.
MacFarlane has also agreed to plead guilty in the case, while Sloane pleaded guilty yesterday. So far, 14 parents have agreed to plead guilty, and five of those, including TV star Felicity Huffman, have entered their pleas.
The case is U.S. v. Janke, 19-cr-10081, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, (Boston).