Details emerged over the weekend regarding deals that two defendants in the nationwide college admissions cheating scandal have cut with the government.
The two defendants, Rudolph “Rudy” Meredith, 51, the former head women’s soccer coach at Yale, and Mark Riddell, 36, who allegedly took SAT and ACT exams for college applicants, have both agreed to plead guilty in US District Court in Boston to federal charges related to the scheme.
On Sunday, a cooperation agreement was unsealed for Meredith, head Yale women’s soccer coach from 1995 to November 2018.
Meredith’s initial court appearance in Boston is slated for Thursday.
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Court papers say that beginning in 2015, Meredith, scheme architect William “Rick” Singer, and others agreed “to accept bribes in exchange for designating applicants to Yale as recruits for the Yale women’s soccer team, and thereby facilitating their admission to the university, in violation of the duty of honest services he owed to Yale as his employer.”
In the cooperation agreement unsealed Sunday, prosecutors suggested Swiss holdings may be in play in Meredith’s case.
“Upon request, Defendant must, consistent with Swiss law, furnish all documents, objects and other evidence in Defendant’s possession, custody or control that are relevant to the government’s inquiries,” the agreement said.
The document didn’t elaborate on the Swiss connection.
The agreement said if Meredith provides “substantial assistance in the investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed a criminal offense, the U.S. Attorney agrees that, at or before sentencing, the U.S. Attorney will file a motion ... to recommend that the Court impose a sentence below the advisory Guidelines sentencing range” for Meredith.
Only the US attorney, the agreement said, will determine whether Meredith has provided substantial assistance, “based on the truthfulness and value of Defendant’s assistance, regardless of the outcome or result of any proceeding or trial.”
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The feds have agreed to recommend “incarceration at the low end of the Guidelines sentencing range” for Meredith, the plea deal said.
Meredith’s plea agreement said the government will seek an order that he forfeit funds totaling more than $865,000.
He’s slated to plead guilty April 12 to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, court records show.
Prosecutors said they’ll recommend “incarceration at the low end of the Guidelines sentencing range” for Riddell. The feds noted his “prompt acceptance of personal responsibility for the offenses of conviction in this case, and information known to the U.S. Attorney at this time.”
The government didn’t elaborate on the information.
Riddell and Meredith are two of 50 defendants charged in the breathtaking scheme, in which parents allegedly cut fat checks to Singer to have their children falsely certified as athletic recruits at swanky colleges, or to rig their SAT and ACT test scores.
The testing ruse allegedly involved Riddell.
A charging document filed in Riddell’s case said he, Singer, and others conspired to cheat the system by “bribing test administrators to allow Riddell to secretly take the exams in place of actual students, or to replace the students’ exam responses with his own; and ... using the facade of a charitable organization to conceal the nature and source of the bribes to the test administrators and the payments to Riddell.”
Shelley Murphy and Milton J. Valencia of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
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