A former admissions official accused of helping students from China cheat their way into the University of Southern California’s graduate school has agreed to plead guilty to a federal wire fraud charge, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.
Hiu Kit David Chong, an assistant director at the UCS’s Office of Graduate Admissions from 2008 to 2016, admitted in his plea agreement that in exchange for money, he placed “college transcripts with inflated grades, phony letters of recommendation and fraudulent personal statements” into the admissions packets of those otherwise unqualified Chinese students.
