The college admissions scam is the perfect scandal in the golden age of grifters
"Gabrielle Bluestone was executive producer of the documentary “Fyre.”...
Like the Fyre Festival disaster, the Varsity Blues
scam is shocking because of an apparent disconnect: In both cases,
ambitious people went to extraordinary lengths to create the appearance
of success and, along the way, lost track of the substance.
The Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland used a promotional video full of Instagram models and a savvy social media rollout strategy to convince prospective ticket buyers that he had a private island set up to offer an outrageously luxurious music festival experience. The Varsity Blues families allegedly used cruder methods, including Photoshopped pictures of kids participating in sports they didn’t play and faked “athletic résumés," and then backing up their fictions with outrageous sums of cash."
