Beverly Hills Bust: Behind the Scenes of the Arrests in the College Admissions Scandal
March 12, 2019
Boom boom boom went the thud of fists. Pounding, for minutes on end, on front doors, on the outside walls, at 13 homes in some of the toniest neighborhoods around Los Angeles.
It’s about six a.m.
What the hell is that racket?
“FBI! Open up!”
FBI?
Doors swung open. The groggy upper class of L.A. discovered armies of G-men in navy windbreakers on the stoops of their magnificent houses. The agents had brought a battering ram for the door, just in case. Sidearms were drawn.
Holy Christ, is that a shotgun?
Hands flew up in surrender. One woman almost fainted in her Beverly Hills mansion. Some of those arrested were escorted back to bedroom closets and permitted a quick change from pajamas into jeans or sweatpants. What was this about? It was a blur. The cinch of handcuffs before the men and women were guided into the back of government vehicles. Bobbing along the hills above Hollywood or cruising down tranquil palm-tree lined boulevards past predawn traffic of morning joggers and maids and nannies making their way to work.
Hundreds of agents had fanned out across the country that morning, from Manhattan to Miami, Houston and Silicon Valley, conducting similar sweeps at dozens more homes. Arrest warrants gave bare details for the raid: conspiracy to commit mail fraud for some, or racketeering for others.
In Los Angeles, the FBI’s unmarked sedans pulled into an underground garage at the ruddy granite Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, as the sun peeked over the horizon. The cars eased into a secured port guarded by U.S. Marshal deputies. A steel door slammed shut, and the stone-faced agents pulled out their prominent passengers, took them up one floor in an elevator, and flipped a switch to buzz through one more secure gate. They had arrived at the United States Marshals Service lock-up.
Gloved hands patted the inmates down for guns and drugs, and then slapped them into leg irons. They were outfitted with “belly chains” around the waist, to which their hands were cuffed—just the way violent criminals and lowlifes are shackled on the TV news.
The processing room was sparsely furnished with a couple of stainless steel tables and a camera in the corner. Next came fingerprints, mug shots, swabs in the mouth for DNA. On the wall hung an ominous poster of an old timey U.S. Marshall with a long ZZ Top beard, pictured next to a hangman’s gallows. Cheery.
The inmates shuffled down a hall with four jail cells on each side. There were no windows and no clocks, like the world’s worst casino. Into cells they went. Deputies uncuffed one hand so the inmates could use the not-very-private toilet in the cell, or to eat their rationed snack: turkey on white bread, a bag of chips, water.
The cells filled quickly, men in one and women in another. They sat, squeezed ass-to-ass on benches.
Prisoners recognized each other. Eyebrows went up.
“Oh, you too?”
It began to seep in that many of those in custody moved in similar circles. Jane Buckingham, the parenting expert and semi-regular on Good Morning America, spotted her friend Felicity Huffman, the Desperate Housewives actress, wearing glasses and her hair in a messy ponytail. And there was Donna Heinel, the tanned athletics administrator from the University of Southern California.
Over in the men’s cell, Robert Flaxman, an outgoing Beverly Hills developer, chatted with Mossimo “Moss” Giannulli, a fashion designer married to actress Lori Loughlin, who was on location in Canada but about to be arrested herself. Devin Sloane, an L.A. entrepreneur, slumped on the bench, in no mood to banter. Homayoun Zadeh, a distinguished periodontist, was in scrubs, as if he had been pinched on his way to work. There were two soccer coaches in the cell, a onetime star from USC, and one from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Perhaps some knew why they were there, but others weren’t sure. And no one quite understood what they all had in common.
Until finally one of the coaches piped up: “Do you all know Rick Singer?”
Mouths fell open. A sense of understanding spread, followed by dread. Together the men moaned as a chorus: “Fuuuuuuuuuck!”
Oh yeah, they knew Rick Singer.
And they knew what they had done.
From UNACCEPTABLE by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz published by Portfolio an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2020 by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz
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