Harvard reviewing pricey sale of fencing coach's home

BOSTON (AP) — Harvard University says it is reviewing a real-estate transaction involving its longtime fencing coach and a man whose son was later admitted to the school and joined the team.

Claudine Gay, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said it was the school's "current understanding" that the matter was unrelated to the recent college admissions scandal dubbed Operation Varsity Blues by federal prosecutors. Fifty people have been charged with taking part in a scheme in which parents bribed coaches and helped rig test scores to get their children into some of the nation's most selective universities.

Today, a lawyer who was among the wealthy parents charged in the scandal said he planned to plead guilty and apologized for his actions. Gordon Caplan, of Greenwich, Conn., is the second parent to announce plans to plead guilty. Caplan is accused of paying $75,000 to get a test supervisor to correct the answers on his daughter's ACT exam after she took it.

Harvard and other schools have not been implicated in the admissions probe.

The fencing coach, Peter Brand, in 2016 sold his three-bedroom, suburban Boston home, which was assessed at the time for $549,300, to Jie Zhao for nearly $1 million, The Boston Globe reported. Zhao never lived in the home and took a steep loss when he sold it 17 months later.

Zhao, whose older son and wife also attended Harvard, told The Globe in an interview he purchased the home as an investment and as a favor to Brand and denied it was done to help his son get into the prestigious university.

Brand did not return messages seeking comment, The Globe reported.