The allegations cast an unflattering light on US college admission procedures and the influence of money.

Douglas Hodge, a former chief executive of US-based asset management house Pacific Investment Management, aka PIMCO, and a venture capital CEO are among those charged earlier this week with a criminal plot to help with applications to enter elite schools such as Stanford, Yale, UCLA and Georgetown, media reports have said. Additionally, Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, and a number of chief executives, are among 50 wealthy people charged in the largest college cheating fraud ever prosecuted by the US Department of Justice, reports said.

The charges against a raft of individuals, including university coaches, parents and a college-admissions counsellor, shed light on the alleged sharp practices people have used to get young adults into leading academic institutions.

One of the charged individuals is Manuel A Henriquez, founder and chairman of Hercules Capital, reports said. Another is Bruce Isackson, cofounder of WP Investments, a California real estate firm.

The saga, if the charges stick, will be sure to grab the attention of the many ultra-high net worth individuals who have gifted billions of dollars to academic institutions in recent years (see some coverage here). The affair may also raise questions over whether such gifts are also attempts to help offspring obtain academic places.

Parents paid from $100,000 to $6.5 million in bribes, with most payments about $200,000, according to prosecutors, Bloomberg and other news services said.

"The parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege," Andrew Lelling, the US Attorney in Boston, was quoted as saying at a news conference. "The case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud."

Investigators detailed a scandal that perverted much of the admissions process for America's elite colleges. Unlike most other SAT cheating cases, the scheme reached deep into the academy, implicating college officials who allegedly subverted the missions of the universities themselves.

Prosecutors claimed that clients paid $25 million in bribes to coaches and administrators from 2011 to 2018. In some cases, the bribes would be disguised as charitable contributions. 

The affair also comes at a time when, a year out from the next US presidential elections, the status of super-wealthy individuals is likely to come under assault. Such stories, even if they are proven incorrect, can be politically toxic. The Democrat Party has seen individuals such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, champion the case for a wealth tax. In New York, as reported here, politicians are mulling a tax on luxury homes owned by non-residents.