Two parents were convicted on Friday in the college admission scandal for paying to get their kids into top US universities as athletic recruits in the first case to go to trial in the case that embroiled shook the country’s education system.

Gamal Abdelaziz, a former casino executive, and John Wilson, a former Staples executive, were found guilty in the case that exposed a scheme to get undeserving applicants into college by falsely portraying them as star athletes.

Wilson and Abdelaziz were both convicted of fraud and bribery conspiracy charges. Wilson was also convicted of additional charges of bribery, wire fraud, and filing a false tax return.

Abdelaziz was charged with paying $300,000 to get his daughter into the University of Southern California as a basketball player even though she did not even feature in her high school’s varsity team. Wilson, who heads a Massachusetts private equity firm, was accused of paying $220,000 to have his son designated as a USC water polo recruit and an additional $1 million to buy his twin daughters’ ways into Harvard and Stanford.

Lawyers for the pair argued that they believed their payments were legitimate donations and put all the accusations on Rick Singer, the admissions consultant at the center of the scheme. The parents insisted that they had no idea that Singer was using their money as bribes and was falsifying or exaggerating athletic credentials on behalf of their kids, the Associated Press reported.

Prosecutors said that a series of secretly recorded phone calls between Singer and the parents proved Abdelaziz and Wilson were in on the scheme. The FBI wiretapped Singer’s calls and then convinced the admissions consultant to begin cooperating with investigators in 2018 in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence.

The defense sought to poke holes in the government’s case by questioning why they chose not to call Singer to the stand. Abdelaziz and Wilson’s lawyers portrayed Singer as a con man who manipulated the parents and assured them his so-called side-door scheme was legitimate and endorsed by the schools.

“He never agreed with Rick Singer to bribe anyone at USC and he never agreed with Rick Singer to defraud USC with some phony profile that he never saw,” Abdelaziz’s attorney, Brian Kelly, told jurors during his closing argument, according to AP.

Thirty-three other parents have pleaded guilty in the case, including TV actors Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and Loughlin’s fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli. The parents have so far received punishments ranging from probation to nine months in prison.

Heinel and two coaches — ex-USC water polo coach Jovan Vavic and former Wake Forest University women’s volleyball coach William Ferguson — are scheduled to stand trial in November. Three other parents are expected to face jurors in January.

(With AP inputs)