A federal decide on Thursday ordered a brand new trial for a former adorned College of Southern California water polo coach convicted within the sprawling school admissions bribery scandal.
U.S. District Choose Indira Talwani discovered that some proof launched by the federal government in Jovan Vavic’s fraud and bribery case to be unreliable and that prosecutors erred of their argument to jurors about a few of the alleged bribe cash.
Vavic, who guided USC’s males’s and girls’s water polo groups to 16 nationwide championships, was convicted in April after being arrested in March 2019 within the headline-grabbing “Operation Varsity Blues” investigation.
Prosecutors accused Vavic of taking greater than $200,000 in bribes to pretend athletic credentials and designate school candidates as water polo athletes to get them into USC.
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Prosecutors stated he additionally helped recruit others to the scheme pointing to wiretap transcripts during which Vavic referred to as the association a “win-win” scenario and the place he inspired a fellow coach with doubts concerning the scheme to “simply do it.”
Prosecutors stated the admissions guide on the middle of the scheme — Rick Singer — made funds to Vavic’s water polo program and towards his kids’s personal faculty tuition.
Vavic’s attorneys argued at trial that he was simply doing what he may to boost cash for his dominant program as athletic officers on the elite Los Angeles faculty had demanded. They argued he was all the time performing in the very best pursuits of the varsity and his workforce, by no means lied and by no means took a bribe.
Underneath the decide’s directions to the jury, prosecutors needed to present that the funds “served the defendants’ pursuits and harmed the college’s,” the decide wrote.
But a few of the alleged bribe cash went to the water polo program — not Vavic himself — and “there was no proof within the report to counsel that Vavic was taking USC Water Polo workforce cash for his personal profit,” the decide wrote. Even so, prosecutors argued he was performing opposite to the college’s pursuits in accepting that cash, the decide wrote.
“Nevertheless distasteful, there may be nothing inherently unlawful a couple of personal establishment accepting cash in change for a scholar’s admission,” Talwani stated. “The federal government’s argument is additional undermined right here the place there was no suggestion that USC returned the cash as soon as the scheme was revealed.”
Vavic’s lawyer, Stephen Larson, stated in an e-mail that the decide’s ruling “protects Coach Vavic from a wrongful conviction.”
“In granting a brand new trial, the Courtroom acknowledges what we now have lengthy argued—the federal government’s case is constructed on the knowingly false statements of admitted fraudster Rick Singer,” he stated. “As we now have demonstrated and the Courtroom now confirms, there isn't a proof that Coach Vavic ever used donations to the USC water polo program for his personal profit.”
An e-mail looking for remark was despatched to the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Massachusetts.
Greater than 50 individuals had been convicted within the “Operation Varsity Blues” case. They embody TV actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, and Loughlin’s dressmaker husband Mossimo Giannulli.
The final defendant linked to the investigation to go to trial was acquitted by jurors on all counts. One other defendant was pardoned by former President Donald Trump and a 3rd defendant received a deal that’s anticipated to result in the dismissal of his case.