Ex-coach pleads guilty in bribery scandal

Associated Press

BOSTON

A former women’s soccer coach at Yale University pleaded guilty Thursday to taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for pretending applicants were recruits to boost their chances of getting into the school.

Rudy Meredith, 51, is the third person to plead guilty in the wide-ranging school admissions scandal in which authorities say wealthy parents paid an admissions consultant to rig their children’s test scores and bribe coaches at sought-after schools.

Meredith, who resigned from Yale in November, began cooperating with the FBI last year after investigators set up a sting in a Boston hotel room and caught him soliciting a $450,000 bribe from a father.

He helped investigators unravel the wider bribery scheme by leading them to the admissions consultant, who later agreed to work with investigators and recorded his conversations with parents.