Date: April 20, 2022 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov The owner of a warehousing company for the shipping industry was sentenced today in federal court in Boston for his involvement in the college admissions case. I-Hsin "Joey" Chen, of Newport Beach, Calif., was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton to nine weeks in prison, one year of supervised release, 100 hours of community service and was ordered to pay a fine in the amount of $75,000. On Dec. 15, 2021, Chen pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and honest services wire fraud. Chen conspired with William "Rick" Singer and others to defraud ACT, Inc. by agreeing to cheat on his son's ACT exam. Specifically, in early 2018, after hiring Singer as a college counselor for his son and agreeing to the testing scheme, Chen got approval for his son to receive multiple day testing accommodations through his son's high school counselor. Such accommodations allowed for his son's testing location to be moved to a testing center in West Hollywood that Singer "controlled" through bribes to Igor Dvorskiy, a corrupt test administrator. There, Dvorskiy allowed Mark Riddell, a corrupt test "proctor," to secretly correct Chen's son's ACT exam answers to obtain a fraudulently inflated score. In exchange, Chen paid Singer $75,000 disguised as a business consulting fee paid by Chen's company to Singer's for-profit business, The Key. On April 8, 2022, Riddell was sentenced to four months in prison and two years of supervised release. Riddell was also ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and forfeit $239,449. Singer and Dvorskiy previously pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Chen is the 35th parent to be sentenced in the college admissions case. Case information, including the status of each defendant, is available from the Department of Justice. United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins; Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; Joleen D. Simpson, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigations in Boston; and Terry Harris, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General's Eastern Regional Office, made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen E. Frank, Kristen A. Kearney, Ian J. Stearns and Leslie Wright of Rollins' Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit prosecuted the case.
