Date: June 29, 2022 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov The former assistant coach of women's soccer at the University of Southern California (USC) was sentenced yesterday for her involvement in a bribery scheme to facilitate the admission of applicants to selective colleges and universities as purported athletic recruits. Laura Janke, of North Hollywood, Calif., was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani to time served and one year of supervised release, with 50 hours of community service. Janke was also ordered to pay forfeiture in the amount of $129,213. In May 2019, Janke pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering. Janke cooperated with the government's investigation. While an assistant coach of USC's women's soccer team, Janke conspired with William "Rick" Singer and others to falsely designate the children of Singer's clients as soccer recruits in exchange for bribes. Specifically, Janke and co-conspirator Ali Khosroshahin, the team's head coach, together purported to recruit one or two of Singer's students to the USC women's soccer team each year. In reality, the students were not USC-caliber soccer players and they were not actually recruiting them to be members of the team. To deceive USC's subcommittee on athletic admissions into believing the students were legitimate recruits, Janke and Khosroshahin submitted falsified athletic "profiles," which they either received from Singer or created themselves and which made the students appear to be elite high school athletes. In exchange, Singer paid Janke and Khosroshahin bribes, funded by the money from his clients, in the form of checks from his fake charity, the Key Worldwide Foundation, made out to the USC soccer program or to their private soccer club. In June 2019, Khosroshahin pleaded guilty to his role in the conspiracy and was sentenced today to time served and one year of supervised release. Case information, including the status of each defendant, is available on the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts webpage. United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins; Joleen D. Simpson, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigations in Boston; and Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division, made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen E. Frank, Leslie A. Wright, Kristen A. Kearney and Ian Stearns of Rollins' Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit prosecuted the case
