By admin Rick Singer, mastermind behind the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, was unapologetic as he spoke out for the first time since being sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
The 64-year-old is living in a Los Angeles halfway house, where he is serving the remainder of his sentence after pleading guilty in 2019 to charges of racketeering, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
He told Fox News on Thursday that he was “hiding in plain sight” and was allowed to leave his home most days to work for a restaurant group.
“Now someone can recognize me and I can hear people talking, but no one cares,” Singer said, recalling his crimes.
He then admitted he was guilty of “everything” he was accused of, but said he wasn’t the only one gaming the college admissions system.
Rick Singer, mastermind behind the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, was unapologetic as he spoke out for the first time since his three-and-a-half-year prison sentence
Singer was accused of accepting bribes totaling more than $25 million from desperate parents who wanted to send their children to the best schools in the country
Singer was accused of accepting bribes totaling more than $25 million from desperate parents – including celebrities such as Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman – who wanted to send their children to the best schools in the country.
He then paid entrance exam administrators or proctors to inflate students’ test scores and bribed coaches to designate candidates as recruits for sports they sometimes didn’t even play in, in an effort to increase their chances of getting into the school.
Singer even vouched for fake athletes like Loughlin’s two daughters.
But others weren’t even aware of parental involvement in college admissions – they took the SAT at places where the test taker or proctor was on Singer’s payroll.
Once they answered, the caregiver changed them to make sure they were correct.
“He was the mastermind and architect of a criminal enterprise that massively undermined the integrity of the college admissions process – which already favors the wealthy and privileged – to an extent never before seen in this country,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
At least 50 people have pleaded guilty or been sentenced in connection with the college admissions scandal as of October 2023, including the Full House star, who pleaded guilty and served nearly two months behind bars, and Huffman, sentenced to 14 days.
Singer even vouched for fake athletes like Loughlin’s two daughters
The Full House star who pleaded guilty and spent almost two months behind bars
Singer spent 16 months in a federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, saying he became friends with some of the other inmates – many of whom he believed were locked up due to false requests for PPE amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said he almost never ate prison meals and instead tried to find healthy foods to prepare his own meals.
The convict has already confessed to his crimes.
“Everything that the FBI, the US attorney and everyone else in the world says I did? Yes,” he admitted.
He then “apologized profusely to all the families I had hurt, to all the children I had hurt, to the administrators I had hurt, to my own family” and said he had done the most damage to people’s reputations.
Singer also said he considered his attempts to cheat the tests to be the most brazen, describing how he began his scheme with one Vancouver student who was intelligent but poor at taking tests.
He said he then paid Mark Riddell – who later became one of his principal accomplices – $10,000 to falsify the child’s final test result.
Singer declined to go into details about the falsified test results, but said it involved a fake ID and described it as a satisfying movie-style heist that paved the way for his future crimes.
“I can say with certainty that what I did, which was illegal, was cheat on tests,” he said.
Actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to two weeks in prison for bribing Singer
But Singer said he has just found a third way to attract students to the college.
He argued that students can be admitted to college in three ways: the “front door” with legitimate achievements and grades, the “back door” where the family publicly donates large amounts of money, or the “side door.” ‘
“This has been going on for hundreds of years. “I’m not smart enough to figure out this process,” Singer said, arguing that his “side door” deals were targeted only because they were done privately, and questioned why “back door” donations made publicly were more acceptable.
And when asked if he thought the college admissions system could still be cheated – and still is – he replied: “Every day.”
Singer also insisted that he had never taken away a spot from any deserving student, claiming instead that his program had simply exposed the budgetary tactics that higher education institutions rely on, which is to block certain “spots” on sports teams and faculty from regular applicants and allocating them to large donors willing to pay for the student’s admission.
“90 percent of the time, coaches call me every year and say: ‘I have a spot available, I need to raise this amount… Find me a family,’” he claimed, arguing with college admissions officials, he was not met with the same assessment as he was.
“The media failed to notice that universities were my partners in this,” Singer said. “It takes two sides to play.”
Singer told how he paid Mark Riddell – who later became one of his principal accomplices – $10,000 to falsify a Vancouver child’s final test result
At the same time, Singer insisted that he also ran a legitimate training company that he claimed had helped hundreds of teenagers get into college.
He said business moguls and top Hollywood stars used his legal college coaching for their children, claiming he had developed such a respected reputation in the admissions world that parents still turned to him for coaching and did so even during his trial.
“I left the courthouse – the courthouse – and showed my lawyer my phone. There are 93 texts: “Will you still come next week?”
Singer spent 16 months in a federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, but is currently serving his sentence at a halfway house
Looking to the future, Singer said he wants to disrupt college admissions and education with his new company called Future ID Stars, which he believes will eliminate the need for high school students across the country by identifying their IQ, skills and competitive advantage and placing them directly into the labor market.
“We believe that everyone needs to graduate from college, there is a right place for everyone, and to be successful you need to graduate from certain schools. And that’s not true, considering the tens of thousands of children I’ve worked with,” he said.
However, he promised that everything he would do in the future would be legal, after checking the opinions of lawyers, which he said he regretted not having done from the beginning.