Varsity Blues scandal

• 1. Introduction

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  Federal investigators borrowed the title of a 1999 film to name Operation Varsity Blues, their case against a conspiracy to buy places at top American universities. In open court, the man at the center of it, William Rick Singer, described his business in a single sentence. "I created a guarantee." The United States Department of Justice has never prosecuted a larger case of this kind. This documentary asks who bought that guarantee and what it cost them. It asks how a tip about an unrelated fraud brought the whole scheme into view. It asks how the cheating actually worked, from exam rooms to fake athletic profiles. And it asks why some of the convictions did not survive appeal, and why so many wealthy families decided the risk was worth taking.

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• 2. Discovery and Charges

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  In April 2018, a Los Angeles businessman named Morrie Tobin offered authorities a trade. He was under investigation in an unrelated case involving an alleged pump-and-dump conspiracy and securities fraud, and he wanted leniency. In return, he told them about a request for money from a college coach.

  Tobin had attended Yale University without graduating. He said Rudolph "Rudy" Meredith, head coach of the Yale women's soccer team, had asked him for $450,000 to help his youngest daughter gain admission. On the 12th of April 2018, Tobin wore a recording device to a conversation with Meredith in a Boston hotel. Meredith then agreed to cooperate, and he later pleaded guilty. He also led investigators to Singer.

  Tobin was never charged in the admissions case. In February 2019 he pleaded guilty in the separate securities case and agreed to forfeit $4 million. Federal sentencing guidelines called for eight to ten years behind bars, but he was sentenced to one year and one day.

  The public part began on the 12th of March 2019. Federal prosecutors in Boston unsealed a criminal complaint charging 50 people with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. United States Attorney Andrew Lelling announced the charges. FBI special agent Laura Smith signed the supporting affidavit, which ran to 204 pages. Each of those counts carried up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.

  The affidavit named 32 parents. More than half of them had apparently paid bribes to get their children into a single school, the University of Southern California.

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• 3. The Counselor

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  Newport Beach, California, was home to William Rick Singer, who was 58 when the court documents became public. He ran two organizations. The Edge College & Career Network, also known as "The Key," was a college counseling company. It was a limited liability company registered in 2012, and he operated it out of his house. The second was Key Worldwide Foundation, a nonprofit that had been granted 501(c)(3) status.

  That nonprofit status did real work. It let Singer avoid federal income taxes on the money he received, and it let parents deduct their so-called donations from their own taxes. Prosecutors said parents paid him more than $25 million between 2011 and 2018. He used part of it to inflate entrance exam scores and to bribe college officials.

  Singer also had a respectable public face. He wrote self-help books on college admission, and while promoting his 2014 book Getting In he named famous clients on his Facebook page. Officials stressed that he had many legitimate clients who committed no fraud. Even so, many former clients made statements afterward to distance themselves and their children from him. Singer himself said he had unethically helped children from more than 750 families get into college.

  On the 12th of March 2019, the day the charges became public, Singer pleaded guilty in Boston to four felony counts. They included money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of justice. The obstruction count came from warning several people about the investigation after he had begun cooperating with the government. He faced up to 65 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine, and he helped the FBI gather evidence against his co-conspirators.

  His sentencing came in January 2023. Prosecutors asked for six years, while his attorneys asked for home detention and community service. Judge Rya Zobel sentenced him to three and a half years in prison, followed by three years of probation. She also ordered more than $10 million in restitution to the IRS and the forfeiture of millions of dollars in assets. Singer told the court, "I lost my ethical values and have so much regret. To be frank, I'm ashamed of myself." He was released in August 2024.

  He had relied mainly on two techniques, and the first involved the SAT and the ACT.

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• 4. Rigged Test Days

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  A falsified learning disability report cost between $4,000 and $5,000, according to Singer. He said a psychologist could produce one, and that the same report could be reused to win similar benefits once the student reached college. Psychologists completed the detailed paperwork that certified a client's child as having a disability. That certification brought accommodations, such as extra time on the exam.

  The next step was moving the test. Singer told clients to invent travel plans so the child's test location could be changed to a center under his control, either in West Hollywood or in Houston. Parents might instead fabricate a family event, giving the student a pretext to sit the SAT, ACT or another test at a private location where Singer controlled the whole process.

  The students' own roles varied. Some took part directly in the fraud. Others were never told, and corrupt proctors changed their answers after the fact. In some cases, a different person posed as the student and took the test.

  The best-known stand-in was Mark Riddell, a Harvard alumnus who directed college exam preparation at IMG Academy. He sat more than two dozen exams, and prosecutors said he was paid $10,000 for each one. He had no advance access to the test papers. One description of him was that he was "just a really smart guy." Riddell pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud, and to money laundering. He agreed to cooperate, lost his job at IMG Academy, and was sentenced to four months in prison. He also had to forfeit nearly $240,000.

  Recorded phone calls, transcribed in court filings, show Singer arguing that the practice reached well beyond his clients. He said: "Yeah, everywhere around the country. What happened is, all the wealthy families that figured out that if I get my kid tested and they get extended time, they can do better on the test. So most of these kids don't even have issues, but they're getting time. The playing field is not fair."

  Jane Buckingham was arrested on the 12th of March 2019. She was accused of submitting false paperwork saying her son had a learning disability. She was also accused of paying $50,000 to Key Worldwide Foundation so that a proctor would take the ACT for him. The proctor scored a 35 out of 36, and the goal was a place at USC.

  The second technique needed no test score at all, only a fabricated athletic profile.

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• 5. Invented Athletes

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  Coaches at certain colleges can send the admissions office a set number of recruit names, and those applications get a more favorable look. Singer paid coaches to put his clients' children on those lists. He ran the bribes through Key Worldwide Foundation, which let him launder the money. He also built profiles describing each applicant's supposed athletic prowess. Sometimes image editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop, placed a student's face onto a photograph of someone else playing the sport.

  The price varied from school to school. Michael Center, men's tennis coach at the University of Texas, accepted about $100,000 to label an applicant a recruit. At USC, senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel allegedly received $1.3 million, and water polo coach Jovan Vavic allegedly received $250,000. Former USC women's soccer coaches Ali Khosroshahin and Laura Janke were indicted alongside them. At Stanford, sailing coach John Vandemoer admitted taking $270,000 to classify two applicants as prospective sailors. Former Georgetown tennis coach Gordon "Gordie" Ernst allegedly helped as many as 12 students through fraudulent means and took bribes of up to $950,000. Other charged coaches included UCLA men's soccer coach Jorge Salcedo and Wake Forest volleyball coach William "Bill" Ferguson.

  On the 20th of March 2019, the University of San Diego revealed that its former men's basketball head coach, Lamont Smith, allegedly accepted bribes. Hours later, Smith resigned as an assistant coach at the University of Texas at El Paso. Two San Diego families were accused of paying $875,000 as part of the scheme.

  A guidance counselor at the Buckley School noticed something odd about one student's acceptances to Tulane University, Georgetown University and Loyola Marymount University. The student had been presented as an "African-American tennis whiz, ranked in the Top 10 in California." The student was white and did not play tennis. The student's father first denied using an outside admissions consultant, then admitted the family had hired Singer.

  Other parents were accused of similar stories. Bill McGlashan, a private equity investor, allegedly discussed using Photoshop to build a fake profile of his son as a football kicker, aiming at USC. Marci Palatella, wife of former San Francisco 49ers player Lou Palatella, allegedly conspired with Singer to present her son as a long snapper. Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, allegedly paid $500,000 to get their two daughters into USC as rowing recruits, though neither had rowed.

  Because Loughlin was known for her roles on Full House and When Calls the Heart, her case drew some of the heaviest attention, and sponsors and employers soon reacted.

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• 6. Public Fallout

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  On the 26th of March 2019, Yale became the first university to rescind the admission of a student tied to the scandal. Stanford announced on the 2nd of April that it had expelled a student connected to the fraud. Indicted coaches were fired or suspended, or had already left their schools. Riddell was suspended from IMG Academy and fired a week later. The National Collegiate Athletic Association said it would review the allegations to see how far its rules had been violated.

  Lawmakers moved too. Senator Ron Wyden planned a bill to make donations to schools taxable when the donor has a child applying or attending. Senators Chris Coons and Johnny Isakson agreed to reintroduce 2017 legislation that would fine colleges with the smallest share of low-income students.

  The entertainment industry reacted fast to Loughlin's indictment. The Hallmark Channel cut its ties to her, and Netflix reportedly dropped her from Fuller House. Her younger daughter, Olivia Jade, lost partnerships with TRESemmé and Sephora. USC scheduled a hearing in March 2019 to consider labeling Olivia Jade a "disruptive individual," which would have banned her from campus for life. By October, the school's registrar stated that neither daughter was still enrolled. Loughlin began a two-month prison sentence on the 30th of October 2020, and Giannulli began a five-month sentence on the 19th of November 2020.

  Felicity Huffman formally pleaded guilty on the 13th of May 2019 to honest services fraud. She had hired someone to take the SAT using her daughter Sophia's name. On the 13th of September she was sentenced to 14 days in jail, one year of supervised release, a $30,000 fine and 250 hours of community service. She reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, on the 15th of October. Her release date was the 27th of October, but because that day fell on a weekend she walked out two days early. No charges were filed against her husband, William H. Macy.

  Culture absorbed the story quickly. Granite Bay High School debuted a new musical, Ranked, on the 4th of April 2019, three weeks after the charges became public. The show had been written over 2018 and 2019 by the school's drama teacher and musical director, and it followed a student whose parents were paying for his grades without his knowledge. Singer had worked as a college coach for local students in the Granite Bay community a decade earlier. Lifetime broadcast a television film, The College Admissions Scandal, in 2019, with Michael Shanks playing Singer. Netflix released a documentary in 2021, with Matthew Modine playing Singer. Julie Buxbaum's novel Admissions followed on the 1st of December 2020, told from the viewpoint of a fictional actress's child.

  Not every parent accepted a deal, and the two who refused would spend years in the courts.

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• 7. Courtroom Reversals

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  On the 9th of April 2019, one month after the first charges, prosecutors added a third count against 16 parents who had not pleaded guilty. They included Loughlin, Giannulli, Douglas Hodge, Bill McGlashan and Robert Zangrillo. The new count alleged conspiracy to commit money laundering, by funneling bribes through what prosecutors called Singer's purported charity and his for-profit corporation. It carried up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. The indictment joined those defendants to an existing case against another parent, David Sidoo, before Judge Nathaniel Gorton.

  Gamal Aziz, a former president and chief operating officer at Wynn Resorts, and John B. Wilson, a private equity executive, refused to settle. Jury selection in their trial opened in a Boston federal court on the 8th of September 2021. The case centered on phony credentials that were meant to get their children into USC. A jury convicted both men in October 2021 after 10 hours of deliberation. In February 2022 Aziz was sentenced to 12 months and Wilson to 15 months.

  The verdicts did not last. On the 10th of May 2023, the First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated all of Aziz's convictions and most of Wilson's in a 154-page decision. The court found that prosecutors had read honest services fraud too broadly and that universities had no property interest in admissions slots. It also said the jury had heard "significant amount of powerful evidence related to other parents' wrongdoing in which these defendants played no part." That created a risk the jury convicted them for others' conduct. Wilson's conviction for filing a false tax return stood, because he had tried to deduct his bribes. The government declined to retry either man. On the 29th of September 2023, Wilson was sentenced to one year of probation, with six months in home detention, 250 hours of community service, a $75,000 fine and $88,546 in restitution.

  Vavic was the only coach who rejected a prosecution deal, and his trial began on the 10th of March 2022. A federal jury convicted him in April 2022 and he was sentenced to four months. On the 15th of September 2022, Judge Indira Talwani overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial. She ruled that the evidence did not show the payments "served the defendants' interests and harmed the university's." The last defendant overall was Amin Khoury, who was acquitted in June 2022. He was accused of delivering $180,000 in a paper bag to a Georgetown University tennis coach through a middleman, without Singer's involvement.

  Robert Zangrillo took a different route out. President Donald Trump pardoned him on the 20th of January 2021, his final day in office. Tom Barrack and Sean Parker were listed by the White House in support of the action, though both denied advocating for him. Zangrillo, Khoury and Aziz were the only parent defendants charged without being convicted of some crime.

  A separate Boston case shows the scandal's reach. In November 2020, former Harvard fencing coach Peter Brand and parent Jie "Jack" Zhao were indicted for bribery after a series of investigative articles in The Boston Globe. Their alleged crimes had no link to Singer, but the prosecution was credited to the increased scrutiny of admissions after the scandal. On the 21st of December 2022, a jury acquitted both after just five hours.

  Civil courts were no friendlier to complainants. In 2019, rejected applicants filed two lawsuits in the Northern District of California against the universities and Singer, claiming they were defrauded of application fees and a fair process. The court dismissed both in 2020 because no plaintiff had applied for, or been denied, an athletic spot. Then in 2024, Wilson sued USC for $75 million, claiming its water polo coach and an athletics department administrator had confirmed Singer's advice to donate $100,000. USC stated that the suit had no legal merit.

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• 8. Why Parents Paid

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  Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, called it "the worst scandal involving elite universities in the history of the United States." Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose state hosted every criminal case, said it was "just one more example of how the rich and powerful know how to take care of their own." The Atlantic, Vox, Rolling Stone and The New York Times all treated it as a symptom of a broken admissions system.

  Much coverage asked why anyone would risk it. A common trait among the defendants was that many were rich, but not ultra-rich. The New York Times reported that at certain elite universities a family would need to donate at least $10 million to earn a second look from an admissions committee. Even then, nothing was assured. The Los Angeles Times added a social angle: admission based on apparent merit publicly validates both the child's talent and the parents' skill, in a way a donation-linked admission does not.

  Others asked why some universities had become so selective. The Atlantic pointed out that college seats are not scarce in the United States, except at a handful of schools that became selective on purpose. In its words, "Scarcity has the added benefit of increasing an institution's prestige." Arizona State University president Michael M. Crow called the pressure a "hysteria." Court filings said one defendant had named his school as one he was specifically trying to avoid. Newsweek recalled former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust saying, "we could fill our class twice over with valedictorians."

  HuffPost noted that this anxiety barely exists in Canada, where four-year universities show smaller gaps in selectivity and prestige, and most employers do not rigidly favor graduates of particular schools. In the United States, selective universities serve as gatekeepers to law and finance. University of Oklahoma historian Wilfred M. McClay told Newsweek that parents were gaming the system "not because the education was better but because the legitimation of social position would be better."

  Psychologists Jonathan Wai, Matt Brown and Christopher Chabris offered a sharper reading in The Washington Post. If the SAT were only a wealth test, they argued, rich parents like Loughlin and Giannulli would not have needed to cheat. In their words, the families had to fake intellectual ability. A 2024 study by Wai, Chabris and three other researchers then examined 30 achievement groups totaling 26,198 people. It found that most groups were overwhelmingly dominated by graduates of 34 elite institutions, especially Harvard University.

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