In case you happened to miss this on Tuesday: the FBI has indicted 50 people nationwide in a college entrance bribery scheme in which parents paid to help their children cheat on college entrance exams and get accepted to elite schools as student athletes, despite not playing competitive sports. The 33 parents charged are all wealthy—two of them, Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, are celebrities.
It appears most of the children who reportedly benefited from this arrangement to gain acceptance to schools like Yale, Stanford, The University of Southern California, and the University of California Los Angeles didn’t know what their parents were allegedly doing behind their backs. But there’s at least one notable exception: Isabelle Henriquez, currently a junior at Georgetown University, appeared to be in cahoots with her parents as they maneuvered ways to help her cheat on her SATs, then get accepted to Georgetown as a tennis recruit despite not playing competitive tennis in high school.
The Daily Beast was the first to name Henriquez as the student at issue in the complaint. Henriquez herself is not charged in the case, but both of her parents are. DCist has reached out to Henriquez for comment. In response to inquiry from DCist, Georgetown says that it “refrains from commenting on individuals students in accordance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.” The university is “reviewing the details of the indictment and will be taking appropriate action.”
Henriquez’s alleged cheating and fraud is part of a larger fraud and bribery operation helmed by a Sacramento man named William Singer. Singer pleaded guilty in court on Tuesday to running a business designed to help the children of wealthy parents gain admission to elite universities via what he called “the side door.” According to court documents, he achieved this by falsifying students’ college entrance exam scores, either by having someone else take the exam in their place or having someone correct their answers afterward. He also allegedly helped students (like Henriquez) get accepted to the colleges of their choice as college athletes—drastically reducing the acceptance standards for their GPAs and test scores—despite not playing competitive sports.
According to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, made public on Tuesday, Henriquez’s parents, Elizabeth and Manuel, helped all four of their daughters cheat on their college entrance exams. In Isabelle’s case, her parents paid $25,000 for a proctor to sit side by side with her and help her answer questions on her SAT exam, according to the complaint. Presumably, you have to know you’re cheating if someone is literally sitting next to you and giving you the answers. After the proctor administered the exam for Isabelle, the two allegedly “gloated” with Elizabeth Henriquez, Isabelle’s mother, about their success. Henriquez got a 1900 on that SAT exam, a 320-point improvement from her previous try.
Henriquez was also admitted to Georgetown as a tennis recruit, despite the fact that she did not play competitive tennis. The tennis coach at Georgetown at that time, Gordon Ernst, has also been indicted for allegedly helping Henriquez and other students gain admission to the school via his spots for tennis recruits. Isabelle Henriquez allegedly sent Ernst an email touting her fake tennis accomplishments, as directed by Singer. She also reworked her college application essay at Singer’s direction to include new (allegedly false) information about tennis, according to the complaint. “Being a part of Georgetown’s tennis team has always been a dream of mine. For years I have spent three-four hours a day grinding out on and off court workouts with the hopes of becoming successful enough to play college tennis especially at Georgetown,” she wrote, according to court documents.
Henriquez’s Linkedin indicates that she’s a Spanish major at Georgetown who currently interns at Compass Point Research & Trading, an investment firm in D.C., and is slated to be a “wealth management analyst” at Jeffries in New York City next summer. She also says she’s the president of the Hoya Helpers at Georgetown, an organization that tutors students at Hardy Middle School in Northwest.
As the Daily Beast points out, Georgetown’s honor code requires all students “to be honest in every academic endeavor, and to conduct [themselves] honorably,” and that students can be dismissed from the university for “egregious first-time offenses, such as altering one’s academic transcript.”
This story has been updated with a statement from Georgetown.
Natalie Delgadillo