Latest / Revisionist History / The Tipping Point Revisited: Georgetown Massacre Part 1

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The Tipping Point Revisited: Georgetown Massacre Part 1 · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. On March twelfth, twenty nineteen, the US Attorney's Office
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: for the District of Massachusetts unsealed indictments against more than
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: fifty people, indictments that were part of a criminal investigation
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: code named Varsity Blues. Business leaders, celebrities, actors, rich people
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: accused of paying millions of dollars to get their children
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: into elite universities millions of dollars in bribes. One by one,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the parents were arrested, pled guilty, paid massive fines, served time,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: reputations were ruined. The media ran story after story. Fifty
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: people facing charges, and more arrests are likely in the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: weeks and months ahead.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Actresses Lori Laughlin and Felicity Hoffmann are two of the
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: dozens of wealthy parents accused in the alleged scheme.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: The biggest college admissions fraud in US history.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Meantime, the scandal stretches from Hollywood to Boston next week.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: It was the largest investigation of its kind in the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: history of the Justice Department. Fifty six cases a home run,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and then came the case at the very very end,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the fifty seventh case. This is me in an email
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: to the US Attorney's Office of the District of Massachusetts,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: asking about the final case in the Varsity Blues Investigation. Hello, there,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I'm looking to interview any of the US attorneys who
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: were involved in the Amen Couri case from a few
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: years ago. Do you think that might be possible? Thanks m.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: A day later I get an answer three lines received.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Thank you. While we greatly appreciate the invitation, we must
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: respectfully decline at this time. At the Department of Justice,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: they do not want to talk about case fifty seven
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of the Varsity Blues Investigation. Oh but I do. My
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is part
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: of a little mini series I'm doing to introduce my
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: new book called Revenge of the Tipping Point, the sequel
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: to my very first book from twenty five years ago,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: The Tipping Point. If you read Revenge, and of course
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I really hope you do, you'll see that halfway through
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: chapter five, the Mysterious Case of the Harvard Women's Rugby Team,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I make reference to a court case called US v.
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: Cooory.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: That's the fifty seventh Varsity Blues case. But in chapter
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: five of Revenge of the Tipping Point, I tell only
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: part of the story of US v. Koory. Did I
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: want to tell the whole story? Of course I did.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: I lost sleep over trying to shoehorn the whole coury
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: case into my book because I regard usv. Coory as
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: one of the old time, most riveting, most unintentionally hilarious,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: most heartbreaking legal battles ever. I mean, it ticks every
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: single one of my boxes. It involves a tantalizing philosophical puzzle,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: It has twists and turns, It makes elite schools look
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: absolutely ridiculous, And if you are a regular listener to
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: this podcast, you know how happy that makes me. Not
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: to mention, it features a cross examination so brutal that
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: fair warning. If you are triggered by a defense attorney
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: disemboweling a witness in open court, you should probably turn
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: this off right now and switch to something safe like
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Joe Rogan. But in the end, I could only figure
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: out how to put half of my favorite case ever
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: in Revenge of the Tip Point, So I thought, just
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: to whet your appetite, I'd use this episode to tell
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: you about the other half. What I've come to think
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: of as the Georgetown massacre. I was actually in Boca
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Ratone on vacation with my family when I first heard
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: about the Kori case. My cousin Kyle mentioned it to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: me in passing, and I was a bit bored. Needed
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: something to read, so I ordered the trial transcripts twelve
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: hundred pages, started reading them over breakfast. Breakfast led to lunch,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: lunch to dinner, then all day. The next day, the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: lazy river was put on hold. I sat poolside, oblivious
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: to the children squealing happily around me. The case centered
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: on a very rich man named amon C. Koori, who
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: is the son of an even richer man, Aman J. Koory.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: So if you look across industries, I mean, my background
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: is private.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Corey Jr. Didn't want to talk to me, but I
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: wanted you to get a sense of his voice. So
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: here he is speaking on a podcast called Michigan Reimagined.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: One of his current projects is disrupting the trailer park business.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Here look across industries, from pagemakers to automobiles, to jet airplanes,
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: to helicopters to computers. The only industry that hauls materials
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: and men to locations and for the homebuilding industry. The
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: home building industry is archaic and it's approach.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Corey is in his fifties, graying nicely at the temples,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: a long, narrow face framed by a pair of exuberant ears.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: A man who takes care of himself, and his great
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: passion is tennis. He played varsity tennis at Brown University.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: He played at the country clubs of Palm Beach and
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Cape Cof. He played with his kids. Something about hitting
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: a round, fuzzy ball over a net clearly made him very,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: very happy, And what he really wanted was his oldest daughter, Katherine,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: to play tennis in college, just like he had. So
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: one day back in twenty fourteen, Amon Curry goes to
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: his college reunion and has a boozy dinner at the
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Capitol Grill in Providence with his old teammates from the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Brown tennis squad, one of whom is Gordon Ernst aka Gordy,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: who was then the tennis coach at Georgetown University. Gordy
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Ernst was not yet notorious, but after the launch of
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the Varsity Blues investigation, he would be the US Attorney's
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Office for the District of Massachusetts. On the occasion of
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Gordie's sentencing hearing said this about him, Mister Ernst was
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: one of the most prolific participants in cheating the college
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: admissions system. He put nearly three point five million dollars
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: in bribes directly into his pocket and sold close to
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: two dozen slots at Georgetown to the highest bidder. And
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: according to the US Attorney's Office, one of those two
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: dozen slots on the Georgetown tennis team was sold at
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the Boozy Brown reunion dinner to Aim and Coury on
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: behalf of his daughter, Catherine. Gordy went down and he
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: brought his old teammate with him, Case number fifty seven.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Midway through my long days in Bocha, devouring the trial transcript,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: I realized that Cooury's lawyers were based just down the road,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: so I called them up. I said, I'm in Boca.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I'm up to page eleven hundred. They said, come on down,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and I made a bee line from Miami. Met up
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: with Roy Black, his partner Howard Shrebnick, and their two
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: longtime partners, big shiny office tower, conference room, stacks of
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: documents on the table. That's great, sure, yeah, So Roy
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Black is tall, slender, usteer almost eighty years old, an
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: apex legal predator, completely and utterly intimidating. His nickname is
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: the Professor. Howard Shrebnick is much younger. He looks like
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: he's in the nineteen eighties hair metal band. He races
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: his motorcycles around Miami in the early morning hours. Oh,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: I nearly forgot to mention, well.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: Your argument next in case fourteen four nineteen Luis versus
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: United States.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: Mister Shrebnick, thank.
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: You, mister Chief Justice, and may it please the court.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Has also argued two cases before the Supreme Court.
• 8:53
  Speaker 6: Howard is the intellectual, does all the legal work as
• 8:57
  Speaker 6: well as working on the fact. But I leave for
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: him all that kind of stuff. That's the great thing
• 9:02
  Speaker 6: about the way that we work. And he'll read cases
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: all day and all night. And his only dream in
• 9:08
  Speaker 6: life as if the case can go to the Supreme Court.
• 9:11
  Speaker 6: But I'm trying to make sure it doesn't go into
• 9:14
  Speaker 6: appeals by winning the trial.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And Roy began by telling me what Amon said when
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: they first talked about the case.
• 9:21
  Speaker 6: He said, when he came here, said I want to
• 9:24
  Speaker 6: go to trial. I don't want to take a plea.
• 9:26
  Speaker 6: I don't feel that I did was a crime. Now,
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: maybe people will disagree with the way I did it,
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: and of course then I did it in a stupid
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: way that it makes it look bad and all of that.
• 9:38
  Speaker 6: But I don't feel I committed a crime, and I
• 9:41
  Speaker 6: think it would be against my own integrity if I
• 9:44
  Speaker 6: went in there and played guilty just to get a
• 9:46
  Speaker 6: shorter sentence, and if they give me a longer sentence,
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: so be it. I would rather have my day in court,
• 9:54
  Speaker 6: let a jury make the decision and what I want
• 9:57
  Speaker 6: to do. And this is about six to seven months
• 9:59
  Speaker 6: before his trial. He said, I will Are you willing
• 10:02
  Speaker 6: to take the case with an agreement you're going to
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: go to trial? I said, yes, that's what we do.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: A little digression. Many years ago, I went hiking in
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Portugal with a good friend of mine whose dad was
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: very wealthy, and we got lost and I said to her,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: are you worried? And she said no, because I have
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the number. And I said what's the number? And she said, oh,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: my dad has these ex Massad guys on retainer, and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: if you're ever in trouble, you call them and they
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: come and get you. Massaud Israel's secret intelligence service. It
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: is entirely possible she was pulling my leg I don't know.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So why am I telling you this? Because Roy Black
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: and Howard Shrebnik are the legal version of those ex
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: massad guys. If you are a very rich person in
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: America and you find yourself in a great deal of
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: legal peril, your best bet is to call on the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: offices a Black and Shrebnick. We're going to be spending
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of time with Roy and Howard over the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: course of the next two episodes. Oh yeah, I'm doing
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: two episodes on the Georgetown massacre, and they will come
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a point when you will ask yourself, is Malcolm Glabwell
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: totally in the tank for the law firm of Black
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and Shrebnik And the answer is, of course, I am.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Wait where were we?
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  Speaker 6: Oh?
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: Yes, am?
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: And Koory is charged and indicted one count of conspiracy
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: to commit mail fraud, one count of bribery. He retains
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Roy Black and Howard Shrebnik, and he decides that he's
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: not going to take a plea. Now understand that everyone
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: else charged in the Varsity Blues investigation, all fifty six
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: of them pled guilty. The famous actresses Felicity Huffman Laurie Lochlin,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: folded their cards, paid a fine. Some of them did
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: short stints in prison. How could they not They were
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: caught paying money under the table to college coaches to
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: pretend that their kids could play sports when they actually couldn't,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and why so their kids could get into a school
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: that they otherwise could not. That's illegal, right.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: You know. Bribe is one of those basic crimes kind
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: of like murder, theft, rape, by which I mean not
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: that it's as grave as that, but it's one of
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: those crimes that are in criminal law scholars called malum incee,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: meaning the earliest crimes, the ones conduct that was immoral,
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: and that's indisputably immoral. That's why it became immediately part
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: of every criminal code going back I don't know, probably
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Hamlabi's days.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: This is Leo Katz, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: In the midst of my infatuation with US v. Korry,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I asked one of the countries leading legal experts to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: read up on the case so I could ask him
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: questions about it.
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  Speaker 3: And then, of course there are crimes that are they're
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: called malum prohibitum, like you know, not registering for the draft,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: or selling illegal drugs, or even not paying taxes, which
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: only became crimes because we decided to make them.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: That point is that we expect to have arguments and
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: complications and gray areas about malum prohibitum, the made up crimes,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: but not malaman sa, the indisputably immoral acts. Those are
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: supposed to be open and shut for Aim and Curry
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: to say, I'm going to fight this bribery charge. I
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: don't think what I did was wrong. Was an act
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: of extraordinary audacity, bordering on just plain foolishness. He decided
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: to be done Quixote and tilt at the windmill that
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: was the US Attorney's office of the District of Massachusetts.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: So he came to the same conference room I was
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: sitting in to ask for help.
• 13:48
  Speaker 6: So that's really what happened. He wanted to have a trial,
• 13:51
  Speaker 6: and we said, yes, we will do it and dedicate
• 13:53
  Speaker 6: ourselves to get ready for this case. No, and that's
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: how it started.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: So when you have a case like this, you must
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: have a kind of gut instinct about whether it's winnable
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: at the outset. So I'm curious about what you're well,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 14:11
  Speaker 6: We did not, at least I didn't have that. I
• 14:14
  Speaker 6: thought that we were behind the eight ball from the beginning,
• 14:17
  Speaker 6: that everybody else had either lost or pled guilty. And
• 14:21
  Speaker 6: I didn't have great optimism about the case, you know,
• 14:26
  Speaker 6: when the client came in. But I said, listen, that's
• 14:30
  Speaker 6: been my whole career is taking cases where things look bleak.
• 14:33
  Speaker 6: I mean, that's what we specialize in.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Black shook his head. The lawyer's nightmare is a client
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: who will not take the easy way out. On the
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: other side of the conference room table, Howard was shaking
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: his head as well.
• 14:47
  Speaker 6: He wanted to testify.
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: In fact, it was a battle to convince him he
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: should not testify, because he wanted the jury to know
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: the truth that he did not bribe the coach, and
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: that what he did was an act of generosity after
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: the fact, not a crime.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: Before the fact.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: A man attacking a windmill, armed only with a tennis
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: racket a lost cause to I tell you that this
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: was my favorite legal case ever, I think I did.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: The first witness for the government was a man named
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Timothy Donovan. He was one of the former Brown tennis
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: players who attended the Fateful Dinner at the Capitol Grill.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: He now runs a tennis academy in Milton, Massachusetts. There's
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: no tape of the trial proceedings, but we've recreated testimonies
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: for you using two loyal members of the Greater Pushkin community,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Dak Shepherd and Britt Marling. Here's Britt as one of
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the prosecutors examining Donovan, as played by Dak Shepherd.
• 15:57
  Speaker 7: Are you familiar with the defendant?
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Am?
• 15:59
  Speaker 7: And Corey?
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: I am?
• 16:02
  Speaker 7: How do you know him?
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: We were teammates on the tennis team at Brown University
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: in the late eighties.
• 16:10
  Speaker 7: Did there come a time when you entered into an
• 16:12
  Speaker 7: arrangement with the defendant concerning his daughter?
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: Yes?
• 16:17
  Speaker 7: What was the nature of that arrangement.
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: The nature of it was, I was going to help
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: facilitate a deal where the defendant would pay two hundred
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: thousand in cash in exchange for a recruiting slot at
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: Georgetown University.
• 16:32
  Speaker 7: And who was he going to pay two hundred thousand
• 16:35
  Speaker 7: dollars in cash to as a part of this deal.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: Gordon Ernst, the coach at the time at Georgetown.
• 16:42
  Speaker 7: And what was the payment for.
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: An admission slot on the team, and what was your
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: role in the deal? I was essentially the middle person
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: to help with communication back and forth between Gordy Ernst
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: and Aim and Coury.
• 17:00
  Speaker 7: Was that payment made?
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: It was by whom by Aim and Coury.
• 17:08
  Speaker 7: What was your understanding of whether the defendant's daughter was
• 17:12
  Speaker 7: actually qualified to play tennis?
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: She was not qualified to play at that level of
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: college tennis.
• 17:20
  Speaker 7: What was your understanding of whether she was actually going
• 17:23
  Speaker 7: to play tennis at Georgetown?
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: The defendant and I talked about how she had no
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: plans to play there.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: To be specific, Donovan went to Cooy's house on Cape
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: cod picked up a brown paper grocery bag with one
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash, got twenty K
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: for himself, and delivered the package to Gordie Ernst's wife,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: who stashed it in a safe deposit box.
• 17:48
  Speaker 7: How did catherine scores compared to the average scores of
• 17:51
  Speaker 7: your clients who were admitted to Georgetown as tennis recruits?
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: They were quite a bit lower.
• 17:57
  Speaker 7: If we can look at page four, please we see
• 18:01
  Speaker 7: a copy of Catherine's transcript, and in particular, her junior
• 18:04
  Speaker 7: year average was seventy eight point five. So how did
• 18:09
  Speaker 7: Catherine's GPA compare to the average GPA of your clients
• 18:12
  Speaker 7: who were admitted to Georgetown as tennis recruits significantly lower.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: After Donovan came a parade of other witnesses, tennis people,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: people from Katherine Corey's high school, her guidance counselor tennis coach,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: all saying the same thing, Katie Coury at a school
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: like Georgetown is a dubious proposition. Day two of the
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: trial was not good for the defense. Day three not good.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Day four comes and goes. If you are Aman Curry
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: sitting in the defendant's chair, you're thinking, I should have
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: taken a plea. I'm going away for years. But then
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: came day five, the Georgetown massacre. Let's talk about Brenda Smith,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: which I thought was the in my reading, was the highlight.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: On day five, Howard and Roy called a witness who
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: worked as a fund for the Georgetown Athletic department. Her
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: name was Brenda Smith. Smith did not come to the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: courthouse willingly. She was peened. All she knew going in
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: was what the Georgetown lawyers clearly told her, which was
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: not to worry. This is going to be easy. She
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't on trial, Amon Courry was. The case was black
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and white and she was on the winning side, malamence.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: So you describe that wholehit moment exchange for me, because I,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: like I said, all I can do is read it.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: So bring it to life. Howard sets the scene.
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: So now Brenda Smith, whose sole job as the quote
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: senior director of development for athletics close quote, and development
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: doesn't mean bodybuilding, conditioning. Fitness development is a euphemism for
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: money raising money. She's now on the witness stand and
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: she's going to suggest that money doesn't matter with regard
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: to admissions, that her job is entirely independent of the
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: admissions process.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: This was the moral heart of the case. Why does
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Amon Courry belong in jail because he used a grocery
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: bag full of cash to corrupt the admissions process at
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: a selective institution where the admissions process is supposed to
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: be about merit and achievement. So Smith takes the stand.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Roy's asking any questions once again? Are voice actors?
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: All right? I wanted to ask you about admissions into
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: the university. The university has an admissions department correct or
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: admissions office correct, And you are not an admissions officer. No, however,
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: you would communicate with admissions officers would you not?
• 20:58
  Speaker 7: No, I never did.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Would you ever get involved in attempting to influence the
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: admission of people into the university, No?
• 21:06
  Speaker 7: I did not.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: Did you ever lobby the admissions office the admission's office.
• 21:13
  Speaker 7: No no.
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: Did you ever advise the admission's office about the amount
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: of money people had?
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: No?
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: Did you ever advise the admissions office that an athlete
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: or a potential athlete came from a well positioned family.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: No?
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: Did you ever advise the admission office about the net
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: worth of parents of potential recruits?
• 21:38
  Speaker 7: I did not.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: Did you ever advise the admissions office about the value
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: of parents' homes?
• 21:45
  Speaker 7: I did not know.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Brenda Smith does not seem to have realized at this
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: point that Howard and Roy have in their possession every email,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: every email she wrote in the time of her employment
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: at Georgetown. Or maybe she does, but the implications of
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: that fact haven't sunk in. I mean, maybe she thought,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I wrote thousands and thousands of emails, ninety nine percent
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: of them. We're harmless. There's no way they read all
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: of them, is there? Well, yes, there is, and Roy
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: starts putting his favorites up on the screen.
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: All right, Can we turn to Exhibit two eighty five,
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: And if we could highlight the middle paragraph, by the way,
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: who is Let's go to the top first. I'm sorry,
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: who is David Nolan?
• 22:32
  Speaker 7: He is the women's soccer coach.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: All right, and he's asking you if she is somebody
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: you want to cultivate.
• 22:40
  Speaker 7: Correct, that's what the email says.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: Good, tell me what the word cultivate.
• 22:46
  Speaker 7: Means, develop a relationship with typically?
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: All right? If we could, Oh, you put down there
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: in the second one, you wrote five point six million house, right, correct?
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: So I guess you do find out how much parents'
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: homes are worth.
• 23:08
  Speaker 7: Right well, you asked me earlier. If I share that
• 23:12
  Speaker 7: information with admissions, I do not. This is an email
• 23:18
  Speaker 7: with a coach. This is different.
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: So as I understand it, then you're telling the soccer
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: coach that a prospective athletics soccer players' parents own a
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: home worth five point six million dollars, right, yes? Now,
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: can I ask you this, what does that have to
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: do with their ability to play soccer?
• 23:44
  Speaker 7: Nothing?
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: Does that have something to do with the ability to
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: get them to donate money to the soccer team.
• 23:52
  Speaker 7: No, it's simply the part of the family relationship that
• 23:58
  Speaker 7: I would be interested in.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: The trial had ended well over a year before I
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: met with the Coury defense team, but everyone in the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: conference room that day, Roy Howard and the two partners
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Jackie Purchek and Maria n Neira remembered the key moments perfectly.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Something would come up in our conversation. They would pick
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: up one of the stacks of transcripts on the table
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and just start reading one.
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: Of my favorite one of the coaches writing to Brenda Smith,
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: the coaches will have to recruit really rich kids who
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: can play.
• 24:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I remember that one. Yeah, well yeah, rich kids
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: who can plain? Yeah, Okay.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: The beauty of it is that before you go to
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the emil, Roy would say to the witness, and did
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: you ever get an email where somebody would tell you
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: that you need to recruit.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: Really rich people?
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 24:50
  Speaker 7: Of course not, mister black.
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: Brenda Smith writing to the swimming coach, in an effort
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: by Brenda Smith to get the swimming coach to recruit
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: the student quote, this is a family who may not
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: have seven figures, but definitely six figures. And Roy says
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: anything in there about the splits the times in one
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: hundred yard dash on the lacrosse team. Of course, our
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: case was about tennis, but it was institutional. Quote, I'm
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: checking on this potential recruit one of my five hundred
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: thousand dollars donors, and next I'm working on a five
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: hundred million plus.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: Million Yeah.
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: And so Brenda Smith writes back, So if the student
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: is in your ballpark at all? Dot dot?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: So wait, did you describe Brenda Smith to be during
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: that destiny? What's she doing? How is she dealing with this?
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: She was sort of befuddled, as I recalled.
• 26:09
  Speaker 5: Yes, another example of someone just denying what was obvious,
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: losing credibility as she's sitting on the witness stand to
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: try to pretend as if wealth did not affect the
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: emissions process.
• 26:22
  Speaker 6: They didn't want to ever admit that money influenced admissions.
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: They will never admit that, even no matter how many
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: emails we show them, they would still not admit it
• 26:32
  Speaker 6: because they knew they could not admit that it just
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: they thought that that would affect the integrity of the school.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Is she is she defiant or humiliated or no?
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: No, she wasn't defiant, as I said, She was more befuddled,
• 26:46
  Speaker 6: like why am I here? And I don't really want
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: to be here? But It's like they told me to
• 26:51
  Speaker 6: show up. So here I am what Georgetown's mission was
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: at the trial to look at to say that development
• 27:02
  Speaker 6: is separate from admissions. That was their whole theme, is
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: that we admit people, but it has nothing to do
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: with money. Sure will ask for money later, but there's
• 27:13
  Speaker 6: no connection between the two. That was what everybody on
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: direct examination testified too, because they thought as a matter
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: of integrity, they didn't want to admit that people got admitted.
• 27:27
  Speaker 6: And he's because of their wealth.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: It's a good Catholic school. It's it's the parable of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the coin. And Jesus answering said, unto them, render to
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: things that are God's, and they marveled at him. Render
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: to development the things that are development, and to admissions
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the things that are admissions. And finally we come to
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: my favorite email. It's from Gordie again, Gordon Ernst, Aiman
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Curry's old tennis teammate to Brenda Smith. You can imagine
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: how much our apex predator is enjoying this moment.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: Now let me show you, he said, send you this
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: email in which he says no idea if he has
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: do or not. He struck me as a bit of
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: a tire kicker, but who knows. Sometimes those are big hitters. Now,
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: why in the world would he be asking you or
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: telling you he has no idea if the kid has money.
• 28:28
  Speaker 7: I don't know. I don't know what this term is about.
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: You responded, he has no money at all, Right.
• 28:40
  Speaker 7: I do say that.
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: Why would you be telling that to the describing a
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: potential recruit like that to the tennis coach.
• 28:49
  Speaker 7: Oh, well, I believe because I was trying to get
• 28:54
  Speaker 7: him back on track. If you see his previous comment,
• 28:58
  Speaker 7: it was about money, and I was trying to talk
• 29:00
  Speaker 7: to him about whether or not this kid was a recruit.
• 29:04
  Speaker 7: The previous emails are about this parent wanting to hold
• 29:07
  Speaker 7: his kid out of college for a year to a
• 29:09
  Speaker 7: gap year, but with the hopes that the kid would
• 29:11
  Speaker 7: be able to play for Gordy, and I was trying
• 29:16
  Speaker 7: to get to the heart of the conversation. Looks like
• 29:19
  Speaker 7: which is how he would not be a recruit.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: But your actual statement is he has no money at all.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: Show me the money.
• 29:33
  Speaker 7: That's a joke, like that was a joke in our office.
• 29:37
  Speaker 7: Show me the money, Show me the money, Like it
• 29:41
  Speaker 7: was just a joke in the office.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: And then you end it by saying he sounds dreadful.
• 29:51
  Speaker 7: Yes I do.
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: Why would you say that?
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Oh, dear, so let us imagine that
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: you are sitting in the jury during the eight long
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: days of US v. Kurry. You might begin with a
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: very straightforward thought that rich people should not be buying
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: their children's way into Georgetown University. But then by day five,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: after the Georgetown massacre, you begin to think, oh, wait
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: a minute. In a kind of roundabout way, Georgetown allows
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: rich people to buy their way into Georgetown University, only
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: they are a little more circumspect about it. I mean,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: no one is making donations to Georgetown in a brown
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: paper bag. But what exactly is the difference between what
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Amon Kurry and Gordy did and what the Georgetown Development
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Office did every day? Isn't it just that Gordy and
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Amon's arrangement was a bit too obvious. This was the
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: point that my legal expert Leo Katz made that suggested
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: a hypothetical scenario to make sense of this. Suppose that
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: after that boozy dinner at the Capitol Grill, Corey and
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Gordy had gone to a lawyer, and the lawyer said
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: to Gordy, you should start a tennis camp.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: And the lawyer says, you know, you could just you know,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: charge an arm and a leg or maybe sort of
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: a sliding scale for getting admitted to the tennis camp,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: and then you predominantly choose people from your tennis camp
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: to be.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Admitted, which you could justify. Right, You've seen them play,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: you know the strengths.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: And if you do it that way, you know, then
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: it's it's I think you ought to be okay. And
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: then then the puzzle right as well. Gee, if it
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: could have been done that way, but just happened not
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: to be done that way, they did it in a
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: more direct way with the paperbag. What's the big deal?
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: It comes to the same thing.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: You're missing one component though, which I'm curious will you
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: make of this? I would add a third if I
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: was him, I would say, and the goal of my
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: tennis camp is not to produce elite tennis players, but
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: to instill in the campers a love of the game
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: and to build character among those you know who have
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: chosen tennis's. I mean, if he does.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: Much better at this than I am, I just that's right.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: I think he'd want to get a lawyer, and the
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: lawyer would probably want to bring in a PR person
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: who can then answer.
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: But he just needs to.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Be frank about the fact he's not interested in turning
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: out Roger Federer.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: That's not that's important to specify that, know your objectives.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: That makes it even easier because then you bypassing people
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: who are maybe better tennis players, then becomes particularly unobjectionable.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: In the evening, after we've hit backhands for two hours,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: we'll sit and we'll discuss great works of legal philosophies,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: such as books books written by Leo Katz. Yes, patron
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: sate of this particular arrangement.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: That would work. This is the hypothetical scenario that would
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: have saved Gordy Ernst and Aiman Curry a tennis camp.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: But wait wait, Gody Ernst actually had a tennis camp.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: You know, he has one he's running at the Georgetown
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: and the arrangement he has with the university is that
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: he was running it on university property during the summer
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: and he was allowed to keep one hundred percent of
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the proceeds from the camp. That was so they had
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: signed off on that.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Wow, makes it particularly interesting.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And the other thing that's fascinating is that in all
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: aspects of the decisions about who to admit both to
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: his tennis squad but also his camp, he has discretion.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: No one is the university is not interfering in a
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: substantial way without it of if he wants someone on
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: his tennis team and gets them on his tennis team,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: and he definitely in his summer camp, he gets to
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: admit absolutely whoever he wants, so say, Gordy Ernst made
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: it clear that he wasn't actually trying to recruit great
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: tennis players. Then wouldn't the crime of letting someone on
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the team who wasn't a great tennis player look less
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: and less like a crime. As I was talking to
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Leo Katz, I suddenly remembered, Oh, there was an email
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: on this right in the middle of the Georgetown massacre.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: It's about a big time Georgetown donor who was a
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: friend who is a kid who likes to play tennis.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Roy made a meal out of this one while examining
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Brenda Smith.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: And then it says his good friend in a well
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: positioned family. What does that mean? A well positioned family?
• 34:55
  Speaker 7: I think it means that the family has the potential
• 35:01
  Speaker 7: to be donors should they become involved with the university.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: All right, And what they're saying here is that the
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: person wants to come to the campus and meet with
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: Gordon Ernst.
• 35:11
  Speaker 7: Correct, that's what it says.
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: You tell Gordy Earnst that, but if she he is
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: in the ballpark, it wouldn't hurt us. Now does that
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: mean that it wouldn't hurt us to recruit the person?
• 35:27
  Speaker 7: No, Gordy is asking me if I want him to
• 35:31
  Speaker 7: meet with the kid, and so I'm saying it wouldn't
• 35:35
  Speaker 7: hurt us if he met with him.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: And what he responds to you another mediocre player? That
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: is my strike zone. What is he telling you there.
• 35:47
  Speaker 7: That his team is not a very well performing team?
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Gordy, you idiot. You could have made all this go
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: away so easily. And that's what I have to imagine.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: The Jerry is thinking, why are we going through all
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: this trouble, sitting here for the better part of two
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: weeks to stand in judgment of two people who are
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: just too stupid to conduct their business with the right
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: number of nudges and winks. The Georgetown massacre was when
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the first cracks appeared in the government's case, and then
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the whole thing goes south because right after Brenda Smith
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: is disemboweled on the stand, Howard and Roy call a
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: mystery witness, and the mystery witness has a very big
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: surprise for the prosecutors of the District of Massachusetts. That's
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: next week in part two.
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: In terms of poise and speaking, she had such authenticity.
• 36:46
  Speaker 6: She came across very well as a witness.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Regional's History is produced by Nina Bird Lawrence with Ben D.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: F Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Karen Schakerji.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Fact checking by Sam Russick. Original scoring by Luis Gerra,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: mastering by Echo Mountain, Engineering by Sarah Buguer and Nina
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Bird Lawrence. Production support from Luke LeMond. Our executive producer
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: is the incomparable Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Voice acting by Dak Sheppard and Britt Marlin, who had
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: so much fun working together on our Little Mermaid episodes
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: a few seasons ago that they re upped for another
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: tour of duty. I'm Malcolm Lowell.