LOS ANGELES

Colleges and companies moved swiftly this week to distance themselves from employees swept up in a nationwide college admissions scheme, many of them coaches accused of taking bribes as well as prominent parents accused of angling to get their children into top schools by portraying them as recruited athletes.

That celebrities were among the accused parents — actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman headline the list — created much buzz, but other parents charged included people prominent in law, finance, fashion, manufacturing and other fields — people who could afford the steep price.

At least nine athletic coaches and 33 parents were among those charged Tuesday in the scheme that federal authorities called the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department.

Some parents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, as much as $6.5 million, to guarantee their children’s admission at the nation’s most elite schools, officials said, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, Wake Forest, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles. All told, federal authorities said the parents collectively are accused of paying an estimated $25 million in bribes.

“These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said Tuesday in announcing the results of the investigation code named Operation Varsity Blues.

The scandal is certain to inflame long-standing complaints that children of the wealthy and well-connected have the inside track in college admissions — sometimes through big, timely donations from their parents — and that privilege begets privilege.

Among the parents charged was Gordon Caplan, of Greenwich, Conn., co-chairman of the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher based in New York. Mr. Caplan “will have no further firm management responsibilities,” the firm said in a statement Wednesday.

Telephone messages seeking comment have been left with Mr. Caplan, who is accused of paying $75,000 to get a test supervisor to correct the answers on his daughter’s ACT exam after she took it.

Hercules Capital, a Palo Alto, Calif., hedge fund, announced Wednesday it was replacing its leader, Manuel Henriquez, who has been arrested in New York City and released on $500,000 bail. Mr. Henriquez will still hold a seat on the board and serve as an adviser, Hercules officials said.

Mr. Henriquez and his wife, Elizabeth, of Atherton, Calif., were charged with participating in the scheme on four occasions for their two daughters. They were also charged with conspiring to bribe Gordon Ernst, former head tennis coach at Georgetown University, to designate their older daughter as a tennis recruit to facilitate her admission and with making a $400,000 contribution to a charity to help her get admitted to the school.

Georgetown said Mr. Ernst hadn’t coached there since December 2017 after an investigation found he violated university admissions rules. The University of Rhode Island says Mr. Ernst, who was hired as head women’s tennis coach in August, was placed on administrative leave.

At a court hearing Tuesday in Maryland, a federal magistrate freed Mr. Ernst on $200,000 bond. His lawyer, Michael CitaraManis, said his client isn’t a flight risk. Mr. Ernst had planned to attend a job interview in Toronto soon, he said, “although I don’t know the impact from these proceedings.”

Also among the charged parents was Homayoun Zadeh, an associate professor of dentistry at USC. His status at USC was unclear; his faculty profile has been removed from a website, and phone messages seeking comment were not returned.

Mark Riddell — an administrator for Bradenton, Florida’s IMG Academy, which was founded by renowned tennis coach Nick Bollettieri and bills itself as the world’s largest sports academy — was suspended late Tuesday after he was accused of taking college admissions tests. Mr. Riddell didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.

Many of the coaches were quickly fired or suspended by the colleges. Prosecutors said the colleges themselves are not targets of the continuing investigation.

Stanford fired sailing Coach John Vandemoer after he was charged with accepting $270,000 in contributions to the program for agreeing to recommend two prospective students for admission. Neither student came to Stanford, the school said.

USC fired senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel and water polo Coach Jovan Vavic. Court documents say Mr. Vavic was paid $250,000 and designated two students as recruits for his team to facilitate their admission. He has been released on bond.

At Wake Forest, President Nathan Hatch said volleyball Coach Bill Ferguson, who was accused of taking a bribe, has been suspended. The university’s outside counsel is conducting an internal review, President Hatch said.

Federal prosecutors said parents paid admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer millions of dollars to bribe their children’s way into college. Some of the payouts went to coaches and administrators to falsely make their children look like star athletes. Mr. Singer allegedly also hired ringers to take college entrance exams for students and paid off insiders at testing centers to correct students’ answers, authorities said.

Mr. Singer, founder of the Edge College & Career Network of Newport Beach, Calif., pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Boston. He is alleged to have set up a charitable foundation through which the money was funneled, allowing parents to take a tax credit for the payments.

In one case, a former USC women’s soccer coach and consultant allegedly worked together in 2017 to help a client’s child get into Yale in exchange for $1.2 million from the family. A false athletic profile created for the student said she played competitive soccer and had been on China’s junior national development team.

The profile was sent to the coach of the Yale women’s soccer team and the student was accepted. Prosecutors said the Yale coach, Rudolph Meredith, received $400,000 from the consulting company after the student was accepted, even though he knew the student did not play competitive soccer.

Ms. Loughlin, who was charged along with her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, appeared in the ABC sitcom “Full House,” while Ms. Huffman starred in ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.”

Ms. Loughlin and her husband allegedly paid $500,000 to have their two daughters labeled as recruits to the USC crew team even though neither participated in the sport. Their 19-year-old daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli, who has a popular YouTube channel, attends USC.