Two arrested in $1.5m Harvard fencing team bribery scandal | Education | The Guardian

A former Harvard fencing coach and a wealthy Maryland businessman were arrested on Monday, on accusations that the coach accepted $1.5m in bribes in exchange for helping the businessman get his two sons into the Ivy League school as fencers.

Peter Brand, 67, who was fired by Harvard last year, and Jie “Jack” Zhao, 61, of Potomac, Maryland, face a charge of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery.

The case is separate from Operation Varsity Blues, a recent college admissions scandal in which an admissions consultant ran a scheme to get students into top universities with rigged test scores or fake athletic credentials. But the allegations are similar.

The arrests of Brand and Zhao come more than a year after a newspaper reported that Brand sold his home for nearly double its assessed value to Zhao. Prosecutors say Zhao also paid for Brand’s car and made college tuition payments on behalf of Brand’s son.

“Today’s arrests show how Peter Brand’s and Jie Zhao’s plan to circumvent the college admissions process ended up backfiring on both of them,” Joseph Bonavolonta, head of the FBI Boston Division, said in a statement.

“Now they are accused of exchanging more than $1.5m in bribes for their own personal benefit.”

Emails seeking comment were sent to lawyers for the two men.

Questions about the relationship between Brand and Zhao surfaced last year when the Boston Globe reported that Brand received nearly $1m in 2016 for the three-bedroom house in Needham, which was assessed at the time at $549,300. Zhao never lived in the home and sold it for a steep loss 17 months later, the newspaper reported.

Zhao, who is chief executive of a telecommunications company, told the Globe he purchased the home as an investment and as a favor to Brand and denied it was done to help his son get into Harvard.

Brand was fired in July 2019 for violating Harvard’s conflict-of-interest policy.

Prosecutors say Brand told an unnamed co-conspirator about Zhao in 2012: “Jack doesn’t need to take me anywhere and his boys don’t have to be great fencers. All I need is a good incentive to recruit them.”

In 2013, Zhao gave $1m to a fencing charity, which in turn gave $100,000 to a charitable entity established by Brand and his spouse, according to court documents.

Zhao’s older son was admitted to Harvard as a fencing recruit in December of that year, prosecutors said.

Zhao paid the mortgage for Brand’s Needham home before buying the home for well above its value, according to court documents. Brand used the money from that sale to pay $1.3m for a condo in Cambridge, authorities said.

Zhao’s younger son started at Harvard in 2017 and is currently a member of the fencing team, prosecutors said.