Three weeks before he headed to Boston to be sentenced Wednesday as the mastermind in the largest college admissions scandal in history, Rick Singer asked a handyman to screen in the front porch of his mobile home in Florida.
He hoped to be home soon, on probation.
Instead, his home for the next 3.5 years will have a much sturdier enclosure: prison bars.
A federal judge on Wednesday handed Singer the final — and longest — sentence in the case dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues,” a sprawling scandal that sent dozens of Hollywood celebrities and wealthy Bay Area parents to prison for paying bribe money to get their kids into elite universities.
In the midst of the FBI investigation in 2019 that captured the country’s contempt for the privileged, Singer, 62, sold his luxurious Newport Beach home and was tracked down by the Bay Area News Group last summer living in the Isle of Palms mobile home park for seniors in St. Petersburg. Two of his vehicles, one loaded with paddle boards, were still in the parking lots Wednesday.
“Everything is still here, like he’s just coming back from the beach at any moment,” said neighbor Barbara West, who spoke to the handyman about Singer’s request. “I don’t think he expected this. If he figured he was going to prison, would you screen in your front porch?”
Singer made $25 million off dozens of desperate, prestige-obsessed parents, then ratted them out by wearing an FBI wire. Prosecutors requested a sentence of six years in prison. The defense asked for probation.
Some 50 parents and college administrators involved in the scheme have already been sentenced, from as little as probation to as much as 30 months in prison. Lori Loughlin, the Full House television series star, served two months in prison after she and her fashion-designer husband admitted to paying Singer $500,000 to help get their two daughters admitted to the University of Southern California as crew team recruits though they weren’t rowers. Desperate Housewives actress Felicity Huffman served 14 days in prison in 2019 after pleading guilty to hiring Singer to fraudulently boost her older daughter’s SAT score.
In court Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Frank called the case “a scheme that was breathtaking in its scale and its audacity. It has literally become the stuff of books and made-for-TV movies.”
As much as Singer cooperated, the prosecutor noted that Singer also tipped off several of his clients and deleted text messages. Defense attorney Candice Fields said Singer took great personal risk by wearing a wire to record meetings to help federal agents.
In court, Singer apologized to his family, the schools he embarrassed in the public eye and others.
“My moral compass was warped by the lessons my father taught me about competition,” Singer told the judge. “I embraced his belief that embellishing or even lying to win was acceptable as long as there was victory. I should have known better.”
Singer pleaded guilty in 2019 — on the same day the massive case became public — to charges including racketeering conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.
One of Singer’s old peers from Sacramento, education consultant Margie Amott who has been an outspoken critic of Singer, said the sentence is too short, and doesn’t solve the inequities and graft still inherent in the college admissions process.
“The outright bribes may have stopped, but can students still lie and cheat on their applications? Can parents still make ‘donations’ that impact college admissions? Of course!” Amott said in a message to the Bay Area News Group on Wednesday. “This behavior may not have changed because the process has not been improved.”
In a sentencing document, federal prosecutors said that Singer paid more than $7 million in bribes, and spent $15 million of his clients’ money for his own benefit. He also created a phony charity to funnel the bribe money so parents could deduct it from their taxes.
Singer started his career as a college admissions consultant in Sacramento, and quickly tapped into the anxiety of parents who wanted their children to be admitted, without the qualifications, to the best universities. Many paid upwards of a half million dollars for what Singer called the “side door” to admissions – not the front door where teens would be admitted on their own merits, or the “back door” when parents donate millions to universities and get their names on buildings.
Instead, Singer arranged for proctors to take SAT exams, often without the students’ knowledge, and to fake athletic credentials, sometimes with Photoshopped images of the teens participating in sports they never actually played. Former Stanford sailing coach John Vandemoer, the only defendant who didn’t personally pocket bribe money from the scheme, was sentenced to one day after admitting to holding open two spots for Singer’s unqualified clients.
In the Bay Area, 13 parents pleaded guilty in the scheme. Mill Valley private equity investor Bill McGlashan served three months in prison after paying Singer to inflate his son’s ACT score. He also talked to Singer about getting his older son into USC as a football kicker using doctored photos. Elizabeth Henriquez of Atherton served 7 months in prison and her venture capital husband, Manuel, served six months after the couple paid more than $500,000 for test cheating for their two daughters and to bribe the Georgetown University tennis coach to admit the older girl as a phony player.
In the letter to the court before sentencing, Singer tried to explain himself: “By ignoring what was morally, ethically, and legally right in favor of winning what I perceived was the college admissions ‘game,’ I have lost everything.” In his request for leniency, he added written testimonials from a homeless man that he helped in St. Petersburg and a nonprofit director in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who was interested in hiring him to work with minority kids.
Although his neighbor West had been annoyed that the mobile home park had allowed Singer, a felon, to move in two years ago, she still thinks that he’s tried to make amends.
“I fell two weeks ago in my backyard and hurt my shoulder. He was walking from the laundry and he stopped and offered to drive me to the hospital and asked about my dog,” West said in an interview Wednesday. “He’s been so nice. I really feel he’s changed. But I guess it’s too late. You still have to pay.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Join the Conversation
We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.