Former Wynn Macau President Gamal Aziz has been snared in the college admissions scandal that is sweeping up dozens of wealthy individuals nationwide who allegedly paid massive bribes to officials of some of the nation’s most elite schools to get their children enrolled.
A federal grand jury has indicted Aziz on charges of mail fraud and conspiracy in connection with an alleged scheme to get his daughter into the University of Southern California as a basketball recruit under false credentials.
Aziz, 62, appeared in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas on March 12 to answer the charges and was released on a personal recognizance bond and ordered to appear on March 29 in federal court in Boston.
Currently identified in news reports as CEO of a Las Vegas-based entity called Legacy Hospitality Group, Aziz has worked in high-level positions with several big-name gaming companies, including Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International.
His time at MGM included 13 years as president of the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas Strip and five years as president of MGM Hospitality, where he oversaw the company’s non-gaming expansion internationally.
At Wynn he served three years as president and COO of Wynn Resorts Development before being appointed president of Wynn Macau. He left the company in September 2016.
According to a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts, Aziz worked with a cooperating witness to bribe a senior associate athletic director at USC, allegedly paying $300,000 in the form of a donation to the school’s Galen Center athletic arena and $20,000 a month to the athletic director. In return, the witness obtained “exaggerated and altogether fabricated basketball credentials” from Aziz to create a fake profile of his daughter that was presented to the school’s subcommittee for athletic admissions. She was approved and entered USC last fall. She never joined the basketball team. According to the complaint, the witness and Aziz conspired to explain this away by saying she “had suffered an injury”.
He is one of more than 50 people against whom the Justice Department has secured criminal indictments𑁋CEOs, movie stars and a well-known fashion designer among them𑁋in the worst scandal ever to hit college admissions in the United States. The indictments include hundreds of pages of allegations covering standardized test cheating as well as rigged academic and athletic credentials. Test administrators are among those implicated. At least nine athletic coaches also have been charged. The schools involved so far include Yale, Georgetown, Stanford and Wake Forest in addition to USC.
