Ex-Georgetown tennis coach to plead guilty in college scam

BOSTON (AP) — A former Georgetown University tennis coach accused of accepting more than $2 million in bribes to help kids get into the school will plead guilty in the sweeping college admissions scandal, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

Gordon Ernst's decision to plead guilty comes as the first trial in the massive case that ensnared wealthy parents and athletic coaches across the country is being held in Boston's federal court.

Ernst, who was scheduled to go on trial in November, agreed to admit to charges including conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, according to the court records. His attorney declined to comment on Wednesday.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of no more than four years in prison, according to the plea agreement. Ernst has promised to ask for no less than a year behind bars.

Ernst, who was the head men and women's tennis coach at Georgetown, was arrested in March 2019 along with more than four dozen others in the so-called “Operation Varsity Blues” case that revealed a scheme to get undeserving kids into elite universities with rigged test scores or bogus athletic credentials.

Ernst was charged with getting bribes from the admissions consultant at the center of the scheme, Rick Singer, in exchange for designating multiple applicants as Georgetown tennis recruits.

Ernst, who also was the personal tennis coach for former first lady Michelle Obama and her daughters, left Georgetown in 2018 after an internal investigation launched over what the school described as “irregularities in the athletic credentials" of students he was recruiting concluded that he violated admissions rules.

He was later hired by the University of Rhode Island, which claimed it wasn’t told about the admissions rules violations. He resigned from...