March 25, 2022
Khosroshahin was a women’s soccer coach at the University of Southern California. He testified in a court March 11 that he initially refused to participate in the bribery scheme, but changed his mind after the school’s esteemed water polo coach told him, “Just do it.”
Jovan Vavic, who led USC’s men’s and women’s water polo teams to 16 championships, flagged students as water polo recruits in exchange for donations from their parents, according to Khosroshahin.
Khosroshahin, the first witness to testify at Vavic’s bribery trial in federal court in Boston, said Vavic urged him to go along with the scheme orchestrated by college consultant William “Rick” Singer, whose wealthy clients were willing to pay to get their children admitted to USC as athletic walk-on recruits — often for sports they didn’t even play.
“I thought if Jovan is doing it, then why shouldn’t I,” Khosroshahin told jurors. “I looked up to Jovan and I wanted to be as successful as he was.”
Vavic, 60, of California, who was fired from USC after his March 2019 arrest, sat at the defense table several feet from the witness box, staring intently at Khosroshahin as he testified. The two coaches are among 57 people, including parents, coaches, and administrators, charged in the nationwide college admissions scandal, dubbed Varsity Blues.
Khosroshahin has already pleaded guilty. He will be sentenced after he testifies against Vavic and perhaps others swept up in the scandal, with the hope of getting a lower sentence because of his cooperation with the prosecution.
During opening statements at the trial, Vavic’s lawyers said Vavic never took any bribes and that $120,000 in tuition payments for his two sons to attend a private high school were well-deserved scholarships awarded by a nonprofit. But prosecutors contend the nonprofit, the Key Worldwide Foundation, was a bogus charity created by Singer to funnel bribes from parents to corrupt coaches and administrators.
Khosroshahin told jurors that Singer first approached him about the scheme in 2009. He said Singer told him if he would recruit a student “that wasn’t of the caliber of the student athletes that I was recruiting,” then the parents would make a donation to the soccer program.
Khosroshahin said he wasn’t interested and Singer “wasn’t happy and called me a Boy Scout and told me I had to stop being so black and white and look for the gray.”
Khosroshahin said Singer suggested he speak to Vavic about his proposal because they had worked together in the past.
Khosroshahin said he then met with Vavic and told him about Singer’s request that he present fake athletic profiles to a USC subcommittee on admissions. “He was very straightforward,” Khosroshahin said. “He said, ‘[expletive] ‘em. Just do it and tell them that they are the best players you’ve seen.’”
Khosroshahin said he helped Singer get seven girls admitted to USC as soccer recruits and none of them ever played on the team, though some worked as “team managers.” In exchange, he said Singer paid $500,000 to the USC’s soccer program and additional money to a private soccer camp owned by Khosroshahin.
He testified that the money was funneled through Singer’s nonprofit because “it was better than getting the money directly from the parents because it created a level of hiding it.”
Khosroshahin became emotional and struggled to hold back tears at times. He said he knew what he was doing was wrong, and a violation of university rules, but at the time he didn’t think it was a crime. He said he believed additional funding for the soccer program would help the team be more successful.
Khosroshahin was fired from USC in 2013 because, he said, his team wasn’t winning. Then, Singer offered to keep paying him, if he’d recruit more coaches for the scheme, he said.
“Singer said if I could introduce him to other coaches, he would pay me when students were admitted,… so that he could get more kids into different schools,” Khosroshahin said.
Khosroshahin testified that he recruited two soccer coaches, Rudolph “Rudy” Meredith at Yale University and Jorge Salcedo at the University of California Los Angeles, to join Singer’s scheme. In exchange, Khosroshahin said he received a $25,000 payment from Singer each time Meredith or Salcedo got one of Singer’s students admitted as a fake athletic recruit.
Meredith, Salcedo, and Khosroshahin are among 51 people, including nine coaches, who have pleaded guilty of participating in the bribery scheme. Singer has also pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. Salcedo was sentenced to eight months in prison, one year of supervised release and forfeiture in the amount of $200,000. Meredith is awaiting sentencing.
Khosroshahin pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy in 2019 and agreed to cooperate with the government. He is awaiting sentencing after he testifies.
During cross-examination Friday, Khosroshahin acknowledged that he’s hoping for leniency, based on his cooperation, but said he decided to plead guilty two months after his arrest because he wanted to take responsibility for what he’d done.
“I am embarrassed and ashamed of my actions and I just wanted to tell the truth,” Khosroshahin said. “I screwed up. I made a horrible choice and I want to set a proper example for my daughter.”
One other Iranian-American was caught in the scheme. He was Homayoun Zadeh, 61, who was an associate professor of dentistry at USC but apparently didn’t know about Khosroshahin.
Zadeh agreed to pay Singer $100,000 to get his daughter into USC and then deducted $40,000 of that from his 2017 federal income tax return as a charitable contribution. He pleaded guilty to that income tax fraud charge and received a remarkably lenient sentenced of six weeks in jail. He completed that sentence February 4 and is now free. He was also fined $20,000 and required to pay $8,400 to the US Internal Revenue Service for the taxes he avoided through the charitable deduction. He was also fired by USC.