BOSTON – In a shocking turn of events, Gordon Ernst, the former head coach of men and women’s tennis at Georgetown University, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for soliciting and accepting bribes to facilitate the admission of prospective Georgetown applicants.
According to court documents, Ernst, 55, of Rockville, Md. and Falmouth, Mass., conspired with William “Rick” Singer to solicit and receive bribe payments from the families of prospective Georgetown applicants to facilitate their admission to Georgetown as purported student athletes.
Ernst regularly used at least two, and often as many as five, of the six recruitment slots Georgetown allotted him each year to recruit unqualified students in exchange for bribe payments. For more than 10 years, Ernst facilitated the admission of at least 22 students – at least 19 of which were Singer’s clients – to Georgetown as purported tennis recruits in exchange for a total of nearly $3.5 million in bribe payments.
Ernst then failed to report all of the income from those bribe payments on his federal income tax returns, leading to additional charges of filing a false tax return.
On October 2021, Ernst pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, three counts of federal programs bribery, and one count of filing a false tax return.
Ernst was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani on May 2024 to 30 months in prison and two years of supervised release, with the first six months to be served in home confinement.
This is the longest prison term imposed in the college admissions case, with Ernst ordered to forfeit $3,435,053, including more than $1.3 million in assets that the government seized in March 2019.
Related Federal Cases
- John Vandemoer, Bribery in College Admissions, Massachusetts 2020 · Massachusetts
- Michael Center, College Admissions Bribery, TX 2023 · Massachusetts
- Bruce Isackson, College Admissions Bribery, California 2023 · California
- Felicity Huffman, College Admissions Bribery, CA 2020 · California
- Gregory Marcia Abbott, College Admissions Bribery, NY 2023 · New York
Key Facts
- State: Massachusetts
- Category: White Collar Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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