[Joanna Lytton-Vasey]

This is quite an interesting feature of the story:

The billionaire Chinese family of former Stanford sophomore Yusi Zhao paid $6.5 million — the largest known sum in the college admissions scandal uncovered by Operation Varsity Blues — to secure her admission to Stanford.

I guess that "former" means the student was expelled and deported? I wonder whether her parents got a refund of part of the $6.5 million. They shouldn't, obviously - I mean it was a gift, right? But it strikes me that this is quite a useful way for second- and third-rate universities like Stanford and Yale to fund themselves, if only they had the sense to cut out the middle-men.