Yes, you are correct. Somehow....a middle-man worked himself into their admissions empire, and found the critical person at each university to offer a bribe. No one is suggesting the amount, but I would take a guess it’s more than $10,000 in cash.
What I’m curious about....how this unraveled? It’d been going on since 2011. I suspect this middle-man had seen this at work prior to that and just copied the effort.
Ethically, every single case that you can prove they entered in a fraudulent manner...I think the degree should be revoked, and the kid given his money back. If they fail to do it...then the degrees and their recipients are just fakes in life.
It unraveled because some of the bribes were paid as contributions to phony charities ... and the Feds got wind of the fact that many of these idiots took tax deductions for their phony contributions to these phony charities.