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Two Local Tech, Investment Executives Named In College Fraud Investigation

Two people associated with Southern California's high tech investment and startup industry have been named as part of the far reaching investigation into acollege admissions scandal, which named Hollywood actresses, CEOs, coaches at USC, UCLA, and UCSD, as well as many others. According to a complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Doug Hodge of Laguna Beach, who had been listed as a partner at San Francisco-based venture investor Sway Ventures and Stephen Semprevivo, the former general manager of Machinima both were part of a group of nearly 50 people who were cahrged by the U.S. Justice Deaprtment in the college fraud investigation. The group, which included at least 33 parents, have been charged with bribing coachings, admission counselors, and others in order to guarantee their children spots into a number of schools, including UT Austin, Yale, the University of Southern California (USC), the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), UC San Diego, Wake Forest, and others. That scheme allegedly involved paying off coaching staff for allowing those children in as "athletic recruits"--even though they did not play sports, paying people to take standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT for them, and even using doctored photos to show the children playing sports they did not play. Hodge reportedly fabricated both a sports resume, and paid $325,000 in the bribery scheme to get his children into USC; Semprevivo, now an executive at Agoura-based Cydcor, reported bribed a tennis coach at Georgetown to get his son admitted as an athlete--even though his son had never played competitive tennis, then paid $200,000 to a fake nonprofit associated with the scheme.