Earlier quoted context omitted.
Donating a building is a payment to the university . The university then gets to decide to admit your child in return. It may not be meritocratic, but it's not corrupt (except perhaps insofar as by pretending the exchange is a donation, the university and donor manage to cheat the taxman). The donor is simply paying the university to provide a service that they have every right to offer for money. It also benefits ot…
> It also benefits other students, which is why the universities take the deals in the first place. This is a little overgenerous. > In this case, we're talking about bribery of specific employees to act against the interests of their employer. That's simply corruption. Perhaps. What crime is it? I went and looked at the charges that were filed, here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/investigations-college-admis... (K…
When the mails are used in the course, the federal offenses that appear to be involved from the charges in this case are “mail fraud” and “honest services mail fraud”; the bribing of the officials would probably also be criminal frauds (against the university) under State law.
> It doesn't look to me like paying an admissions officer to admit your child is a crime at all.
Then why are people being charged with (or pleading guilty to) criminal fraud (or patterns of racketeering activity where the concrete racketeering activity includes criminal frauds) for doing that, conspiring to do it, or facilitating other people doing it? Yes, the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over mere fraud, so it's the use of the mail that is key to the federal charges on this case, but the basis of the charges here (other than the money laundering and tax fraud related to concealing the quantity and source of the profits from the main scheme) are all about bribing school and test administrators.