Jovan Vavic

Early and personal life Vavic was born in Montenegro, which was then part of Yugoslavia. He grew up in Herceg Novi and emigrated to the United States in 1984. Vavic graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor's degree in history in 1992. He is a resident of Rancho Palos Verdes, California. His teams won 16 national titles, including 1998, 2003, 2005, and 2008 with the USC men's water polo teams.

Indictment in bribery scandal and trial

Vavic was arrested and indicted in March 2019 in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal. He was accused of signing two "recruits" who had never actually played competitive water polo, to help the students gain admission to USC, in exchange for $250,000 in bribes from the students' parents.

Vavic was fired by USC in the immediate wake of his indictment. Following his arrest, Vavic put his Rancho Palos Verdes home on the market and offered to sell it for $2.499 million. On April 8, 2022, a federal jury in Boston convicted Vavic of fraud and bribery. On September 15, 2022, Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani overturned Vavic's conviction and ordered for a new trial to take place. Talwani cited the significance of USC accepting payment from the students’ families as a reason for overturning the conviction, and that evidence did not show that the payments “served the defendants’ interests and harmed the university’s.”