The Chinese Stanford student whose parents paid $6.5 million to a crooked college fixer for securing her spot at the top school comes from a family of Bentley-driving billionaires who sent her to posh British boarding schools.
But Yusi “Molly” Zhao’s pharma tycoon dad once bragged that he has no time for rich kids who “don’t rely on their own abilities.”
“I really look down on those kids who don’t rely on their own abilities,” Tao Zhao told a Chinese magazine in 2015, according to a new New York Times report.
“If I come across one, I give them a dressing down right away. I just can’t stand that type.”
The Times spotted a Ferrari, a Tesla, a Bentley and a Land Rover in front the family’s opulent mansion in Beijing Thursday.
But the dad claimed his kids aren’t spoiled — because they have to borrow the Bentley.
“If they want to drive, they have to borrow one from me,” he told the mag.
Tao’s wife on Thursday admitted to paying the $6.5 million figure to college admissions adviser William “Rick” Singer in 2017, after their daughter got into Stanford — but claimed she thought it was just a regular donation to the school.
Prosecutors allege Singer falsely presented the girl to Stanford as a competitive sailor — and paid a $500,000 bribe to the school’s sailing coach — and that the bogus credentials helped her secure a spot at the prestigious college.
Yusi was booted out of the school for falsifying her application, although neither she nor her parents have been charged in the scandal.
The Zhaos are the 82nd richest family in China, according to the Wall Street Journal —with Forbes putting Tao’s net worth at $1.8 billion.
Tao, who has an MBA from Fordham University, runs a company called Buchang Pharmaceuticals, which was started by his father, Buchang Zhao.
Buchang was himself once accused of bribery — for paying $10,000 to a corrupt official in China’s food and drug administration, according to the Times.
In the 2015 profile, another daughter, Yuchen Zhao, said the kids were raised knowing “that the family’s money is the family’s and is none of our business.”
“We can get the best education available, but if we want to live better off, we have to earn it ourselves,” she said.
Yusi went to elementary school in Beijing then attended high school at the posh Wellington College in the UK, which charges $17,449 a term for boarding students.
In a 2015 magazine for international students at the school, a student identifying herself as Molly Zhao says she’s been at boarding school since age 6 and marveled at the poverty she witnessed during a trip with a Chinese charity.
“Many of the children there have never tried any sweets, crisps or any kind of treats; I mean can imagine that?” she wrote. “How can we survive without all those junk foods?”
