The college admission scandal gained a tremendous amount of attention this past spring.  One of the more interesting aspects of the scandal was the use of a non-profit organization to launder bribe money, because non-profit organizations are required to make their tax returns public.  This detail of the story lead us to look at the IRS data that is available in our political knowledge graph (PoliGraph API).  In this post we use data in PoliGraph along with Neo4j Bloom to analyze and visualize the story through grant awards, boards of directors, and contractors.

The figure at the center of this scheme, Rick Singer (plead guilty), is the the President of The Key Worldwide Foundation, a 501c(3) organization.  Singer allegedly used the foundation as a vehicle to funnel money from parents to schools, athletics departments, and administrative officials in order to ensure students whose parents had the means were accepted into the University, while also avoiding taxes.  In this post, we take a look at the 990 Forms published by the IRS for the Key Worldwide Foundation from 2013 to 2016.

Looking first at the grant recipients of the organization, it’s immediately clear there is significant overlap between Universities and athletic departments with indicted personnel, and those that received grants from the Key Worldwide Foundation. Given the current knowledge about indictments, this list includes Georgetown, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, and USC. There are also some possibly interesting avenues to look into concerning the grants given to DePaul University, where Rick Singer’s son was a student.

One example of a high profile individual on the coaching side of this story is Gordon Ernst (plead not guilty), the former Georgetown tennis coach.  Ernst is alleged to have collected $2.7 million in bribes.  A look at the contractors for the Key Worldwide Foundation shows that he was paid approximately $1.3 million as a contractor for consulting in the years 2014-2016.

Unfortunately, the IRS censors donations to 501c(3) organizations; and these organizations are generally not required to disclose donations, with some exceptions, such as private foundations.  Therefore, for the most part, money coming into the Key Worldwide Foundation is obscured.  However, incoming money can also be found on the tax returns of other Non-Profit organizations when those organizations give grant money to Key Worldwide.

There is at least one instance where an indicted parent has a clearly visible link to grants given to Key Worldwide.  Michelle Merage-Janavs (plead not guilty), a former food manufacturing executive, has a direct grant payment to Key Worldwide from her foundation, the Michelle Janavs Foundation, in the amount of $50,000.  This amount is equivalent to the amount cited in this CBS news article.  There is, however, a separate grant given to Key Worldwide by an organization run by her extended family (The Paul & Elisabeth Merage Family Foundation) in the amount of $400,000, which we haven’t seen mentioned in the news at this time.  This was found on The Paul & Elisabeth Merage Family Foundation 2017 990 form.