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So many themes converge in today’s big story about bribery at the University of Pennsylvania that one hardly knows where to start.

But let’s start with an April ceremony at another school: the University of Miami. There much fuss was made about the stellar, the great and the good Morris Esformes, who endowed a chair in medicine at UM.

At one point in the write-up, mention is made of another Morris Esformes chair in medicine, this one at the University of Chicago. But when Esformes’ son and nursing home business partner, Philip, was arrested for having run the largest health-related fraud in US history (he’s still in jail two years later, awaiting trial), the U of C seems to have decided it didn’t want a chair with the name Esformes on it anymore. Maybe the irony of sucking up all that money for medicine when said money came from generations of abused and neglected old people was a little too much for them.

The most recent holder of the University of Chicago medical school’s Esformes chair was suddenly and without comment renamed Louis Block.

**************

Incidental among the many crimes sonny is alleged to have committed was the bribery of a high-profile basketball coach at the University of Pennsylvania. The bribery was on behalf of sonny’s own little whippersnapper, Morris the Second, who, according to a report, got into Penn on said coach’s recommendation – the kid was a great basketball player, see, and it had nothing to do with the $74,000 in payments Philip made to the coach on the kid’s behalf.

Did the kid ever play on Penn’s team? Nooooo you silly reader…..

Admissions fraud, Medicare fraud, Medicaid fraud, NCAA fraud… This one’s got it all.

Margaret Soltan, July 21, 2018 5:47PM
Posted in: sport

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4 Responses to “So many themes converge in today’s big story about bribery at the University of Pennsylvania that one hardly knows where to start.”

  1. JND Says:

    Roll Quakers!

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    JND: That “Quakers” designation … I dunno….

  3. theprofessor Says:

    The strange thing is that the coach (so far, anyway) has not been charged with anything.

  4. Margaret Soltan Says:

    tp: I think that’s very much on its way. So far it’s just one more announced element of the world’s largest list of crimes attributed to one person; I’m gonna guess that in not too long a time the coach will be formally charged. It’ll be interesting to see what the rancid cynical NCAA decides to do…

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