Ex-Harvard teacher found guilty of swindling Hong Kong couple seeking Ivy League boost for sons
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 11 April, 2015, 1:53pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 11 April, 2015, 9:08pm
Reuters and Staff Reporters
Mark Zimny poses for photos for the South China Morning Post in 2012. Photo: K.Y. Cheng
A former Harvard lecturer was convicted of stealing more than US$600,000 from a Hong Kong couple after they paid him millions to help get their sons accepted into Ivy League schools.
Hong Kong jewellery magnate Gerald Chow and his wife Lily were persuaded to pay Mark Zimny, who ran a company called Ivy Admit, a more than US$2 million retainer for educational consulting in 2008.
Zimny first agreed in 2007 to help the Chows' two sons, then aged 16 and 14, earlier reports said.
He would provide tutoring to the two children while they attended American preparatory schools, and offered to "grease the admission wheels", funnelling donations to elite colleges while also investing on the Chows' behalf.
A detailed written plan stated "our target university is Harvard", according to a Boston Globe report.
Zimny got to know the Chows about eight years ago at a ceremony at a Massachusetts prep school where one of the Chow boys was enrolled.
He later met the couple in Hong Kong and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located, including at a dinner with friends who were Harvard professors, the Globe reported.
Zimny, who taught sociology at Harvard more than 10 years ago before running the Cambdridge, Massachussetts-based firm, later convinced the couple that elite schools would accept their two sons if they made generous donations, and the couple gave Zimny about US$650,000.
“Rather than delivering the funds to the schools as he promised, however, Zimny embezzled the funds for his own purposes,” the US Attorney’s Office said.
Zimny warned the Chows against giving donations to schools directly, according to the lawsuit. "Embedded racism" had made development offices wary of Asian donors, he allegedly advised them, and that it would be better to use his company as a middleman.
Zimny told the South China Morning Post in a 2012 interview that the Chows gave him the mandate to invest the money, but were not concerned how it was distributed in the stock market. About half of the funds were lost in investments and financial upheavals, he claimed.
"Not once did Gerald Chow call me and ask how the investment was going," Zimny said at the time.
The Chow couple's sons failed to get into Harvard. Zimny told the Post there was "nothing" he could give the family, saying he had delivered his services and did not know what the couple wanted.
Zimny was convicted of 13 counts of fraud in US federal court in Boston. He was found “not guilty” by the Boston jury on a 14th count of fraud against a Massachusetts bank.
Separately, the Chows have also filed a civil suit to recover the more than US$2 million they say they paid to Zimny.
He was released on US$100,000 bail and is due for sentencing on July 9, the US Attorney’s Office said in a release issued on Thursday.
Gerald Chow, in a written reply to South China Morning Post’s queries, said: “No comment for now. All I can say is justice's been served.”
Albert Watkins, Zimny’s attorney, said he disputed the conviction, and plans to file a motion to interview the case’s jurors after finding a blog post about the case written by an anonymous author claiming to have been on the jury.
“We are very concerned about what appears to be jury misconduct,” said Watkins, adding that such misconduct, if proven, could lead to a mistrial.
