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On Friday, Gordon Ernst, a former head tennis coach at Georgetown University, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for an alleged college admissions fraud racket.
According to Reuters, Gordon Ernst is accused of receiving over $3.5 million in bribes to facilitate college admissions for children from wealthy families.
Prosecutors sought four years in prison for the disgraced former tennis coach, but he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. However, Ernst's punishment is still the harshest among all the key figures targeted in Operation Varsity Blues, the investigation into a vast college bribery scandal.
The Washington Post reported that the college admissions scheme Gordon Ernst was involved in was just the tip of the iceberg.
Federal prosecutors claim to have evidence of powerful university officials across the nation bribing exam administrators and coaches. The officials are also alleged to have laundered bribery money through the use of charitable organizations.
The alleged crimes of Gordon Ernst
Reportedly, over the past decade, Gordon Ernst has accepted money from wealthy families to give their children positions on the tennis team regardless of their skill.
In Ernst's testimony, he said that he met Rick Simon, the alleged mastermind of the university bribery scheme, in 2008.
Prosecutors claimed that after he became embroiled in the network, Ernst helped at least 24 students fraudulently get into the school as tennis players. He allegedly gave 2-5 spots to unqualified students each year. Prosecutors also accused him of using the bribery money to pay for his daughter's private school, as well as a vacation home in Cape Cod.
Although Ernst left Georgetown for the University of Rhode Island in 2018, he was one of 54 people arrested and charged in the college bribery scandal in 2019.
In court, Ernst apologized for his role in the scheme, telling the Judge that his actions were hypocritical in light of the values he tried to inculcate in his players.
He said:
"I'm most ashamed that I didn't follow what I was preaching to them."
In court papers, Ernst's defense acknowledged that he had been a dignified figure in Georgetown. The defense even went on to compare his fall from grace to the fall of Icarus, a character from Greek mythology.
The court papers stated:
"(Gordon Ernst) flew too close to the sun and forgot his wings were made of wax."
According to his lawyers, since his 2019 arrest, Gordon Ernst has avoided any trouble. After being forced to resign from the University of Rhode Island, he held several part-time jobs, working as a tennis coach, rental car cleaner and a hockey referee.
CBS noted that the alleged mastermind in the scandal, Rick Simon, is expected to be sentenced in September.
