Two Stanford Students File First Class Action Lawsuit Over College Entrance Scandal

Two current students at Stanford University have filed the first lawsuit over the college entrance scandal that included actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.

According to court documents obtained by The Blast, Erica Olsen and Kalea Woods are suing the alleged ringleader of the scheme, William “Rick” Singer and his company, The Key Worldwide Foundation.

The lawsuit also includes USC, UCLA, Stanford, University of San Diego, University of Texas, Wake Forest, Yale and Georgetown.

In their lawsuit, Olsen and Woods both claim that they have been “damaged” because they attend Stanford, one of the schools “plagued by the scandal.”

Each girl argues that their “degree is now not worth as much as it was before, because prospective employers may now question” whether or not they were admitted to the university on their own merits, “versus having parents who were willing to bribe school officials.”

Olsen claims she applied to Yale but “was never informed that the process of admission was an unfair, rigged process, in which rich parents could buy their way into the university through bribery. Had she known that the system at Yale University was warped and rigged by fraud, she would not have spent the money to apply to the school. She also did not receive what she paid for—a fair admissions consideration process.”

Woods made the same argument, but for USC.

The class action lawsuit claims that damages could exceed $5 million.

Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were among the 40 people charged with possible mail fraud in a massive college entrance exam scheme. They were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

In the arrest warrant, Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy, allegedly “made a purported charitable contribution of $15,000 to KWF [a college prep company] to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her oldest daughter. Huffman later made arrangements to pursue the scheme a second time, for her younger daughter, before deciding not to do so.”

According to the warrant, Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, allegedly “agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team-despite the fact that they did not participate in crew-thereby facilitating their admission to USC.”

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