A Lighter Shade of (Varsity) Blues: First Circuit Overturns Bribery Convictions
The Varsity Blues college admissions saga took another interesting turn at the end of June, when prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts dropped all charges against one defendant, Gama Abdelaziz, and all but one charge against another, John Wilson. This new development comes after the First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Abdelaziz's and Wilson's convictions on most charges last month. Among the charges leveled at Abdelaziz and Wilson were conspiracy to corruptly influence university employees in violation of the federal programs bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. § 666; honest services and property fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1343 and 1346; and, for Wilson, additional bribery, wire fraud and tax charges.
In May, the First Circuit held that the government failed to prove that Abdelaziz and Wilson joined the overarching conspiracy among Rick Singer and his clients charged in the indictments. As counsel for Abdelaziz and Wilson argued, this larger conspiracy was a so-called rimless wheel, in that Singer, as the alleged "hub," had connections to each set of parents individually, but the parents did not join a larger conspiracy with each other, thus never completing the "rim." This was prejudicial to Abdelaziz's and Wilson's trials because prosecutors, through the larger alleged conspiracy, were able to introduce evidence of other parents' activities that undermined...
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