2019-09-01 Vanity Fair UK

126 VANITY FAIR SEPTEMBER 2019

especially pre-
cious—Yale might only admit one or two
from any given year. Given the school’s
competitive environment, parents and chil-
dren alike studied the particulars of each
Ivy League acceptance. The admittance of
one Tobin daughter from Marlborough, for
example, raised eyebrows with at least one
parent, who felt that her own daughter, who
was at the top of the class, might have been
unfairly denied a spot. Still, there’s no sug-
gestion that any bribes were paid for the
older girls’ admissions.
His youngest daughter, Kate, was a dif-
ferent story. “Even at a school as rich and
privileged and occasionallyMeanGirls–
ishas Marlborough, there was a group of
kids who took that to the next level,” says a
parent. “She was in that group. Very savvy
and competitive and alert socially, and not
all that nice to girls on the outside of her
group.” (In addition to Jack Buckingham,
her wider social network includes three oth-
ers who have been implicated: Olivia Jade
and Bella Giannulli, and Matteo Sloane.)
As a result, some classmates viewed her
warily. A source close to Kate believes “there
was an element of jealousy” in their nega-
tive view of her. After all, according to this
source, Kate was both a top student and a
great athlete, playing club soccer at an elite
level. According to this person, Kate was also
concerned about unfair college admission
practices she saw happening around her.
On multiple occasions in 2017 and 2018,
she went to school administrators and
voiced her concern about students from
Marlborough and elsewhere who she had

heard were paying a West L.A. psychiatrist

to state, erroneously, that they had a learn-

ing disability so that they could get extra

time on their standardized tests.

However impressive Kate was as an appli-

cant, Morrie Tobin wasn’t taking any chances.

He got a jump on Kate’s college process early,

starting in eighth grade. Retired Marlborough

science teacher Nessim Lagnado recalls

Tobin urging him to let Kate into accelerated

chemistry even though she was not ready

for it. (Lagnado declined.) And then there

was the Yale side of things. In 2017, Tobin

had two daughters attending Yale. While

they hadn’t been designated as soccer

recruits, both played club soccer, which is

how Tobin came to know the soccer coach,

Rudy Meredith. Meredith had already been

accepting bribes, via Singer, since 2015,

according to prosecutors. Now, in the sum-

mer of 2017, just as Kate was a rising junior,

the two men made contact directly and

hatched a plan for bribe payments to be made

in exchange for getting Kate in as a soccer

recruit. A source close to the family says that

Meredith was the instigator of this plan, and

that he pressured Tobin, telling him that

other parents were doing it. Whatever the

case, the men agreed. The bribes would

come in monthly installments and would

total mid–six figures.

Kate was promptly told that she was being

accepted as a soccer recruit to Yale. Accord-

ing to a source close to her, she was in the

dark about what her father had done to make

this happen and believed she had earned the

spot on her own merits.

In September 2017, at the start of her

junior year, Kate was sharing the exciting

news with classmates. She even posted a

photo of herself on Instagram wearing a

Yale sweatshirt, grinning, with the follow-

ing caption: “so excited to say that I have

been committed to play soccer at yale.” It

didn’t go over well. “The soccer thing was

weird,” says a parent. According to this par-

ent, although she was a fine soccer player,

those who understood the world of soccer

recruitment didn’t believe she was Division

I material—her stats were not at that level.

More important, the timing of the post felt

show-offy and thoughtless, coming out just

as her classmates were facing the daunting

application process. But they threw their

hands up—that was Kate Tobin for you.

THINGS FALL APART

The first cracks in the Singer case began to

form over the course of the 2017–18 school

year at Buckley, thanks to a savvy school

guidance counselor, Julie Taylor-Vaz. She

was sometimes treated like a concierge by

the parents, according to a fellow adminis-

trator; they huffed when she didn’t return

calls immediately. But she was methodical

and sharp. Sometime after Matteo Sloane

got his conditional acceptance letter to

USC, Taylor-Vaz spoke with a USC admis-

sions officer, who told her about Matteo

being admitted as a water polo recruit. She

expressed her bewilderment—Buckley

didn’t have a water polo team. News of her

skepticism traveled from the USC admis-

sions office to USC senior women’s athletic

director Donna Heinel, who told Singer,

who told Devin Sloane. Sloane grew indig-

nant about the interference of Taylor-Vaz

and wrote to Singer in an email: “The more

I think about this, it is outrageous! [Buck-

ley has] no business or legal right consid-

ering all the students [sic] privacy issues to

be calling and challenging/question [my

son]’s application.”

The Sloane family managed to squeak

by, with Matteo getting accepted into USC

class of 2022. But during the same school

year, the Bass family would be stopped

in its tracks, bringing the truth one step

closer to coming out. In December 2017,

Taylor-Vaz found herself in a different curi-

ous conversation, this time with Tulane. A

Tulane admissions officer said the college

would be delighted to offer a spot to one of

Buckley’s students, Eliza Bass—an African

American tennis whiz, ranked in the Top

10 in California, whose parents had never

attended college. But Taylor-Vaz knew this

wasn’t true. Eliza was white. She didn’t play

tennis competitively. And her father was

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 81

College Scam

there are “sensitivities” to this particular
case. It connects to other ongoing investi-
gations that he isn’t at liberty to discuss, he
adds, his right eye winking itself shut. The
French National Police declined to provide
any further comment, noting only that the
case may not be “definitively” closed.
“The truth is,” says Punch Stanimirovic,
“some Pink Panther members don’t even
know that they’re in the Pink Panthers.”

Elaborating, he refers to the possible

behind-the-scenes involvement in the

Harry Winston case of a group member

called the Engineer who, he says, has one

lung and could have “either organized it,

or he did it, he planned it, he executed it,

he was part of it.” If so, he says, the Engi-

neer may still be in possession of unrecov-

ered jewels.

Of the 881 Harry Winston pieces that

were stolen, several hundred were seized at

Doudou’s property, but 493 items are still

unaccounted for. Where they went remains

a mystery. Their gang likely smuggled some

of them out of France on flights they made

before being caught. At least one gemstone

shattered when they tried to extract it from

its clamps. And another reportedly landed

in a most intriguing place.

According to a report published in Le

Parisien, one of the finest diamonds taken

from Harry’s has been spotted by sourc-

es in Russia—on the finger of Lyudmila

Putina, who is said to have received it as a

gift from her former husband of 30 years,

Vladimir Putin.

Paris Heist

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