Downloaded from YTS.MX
[woman 1] I'm about to check my USC decision.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
I know it'll be okay if I don't. I saw a lot of people got rejected, so…
I'm already on the page. It says "status update."
-[woman 2] "New update." -I clicked it.
Okay, status update.
This is my ultimate dream school.
I'm getting rejected. I already know.
I just clicked it. Oh, my God.
[gasping]
Oh, my God.
Wait, I got accepted!
[screams]
Oh, my God!
[screaming]
-Yeah! -[crying]
[all screaming and cheering]
[woman 3] This is some crazy stuff.
Let's talk about this.
There's been a firestorm of news coverage on a sort of college admissions scandal.
Explosive details about the largest college admissions scam
prosecuted by the Department of Justice ever.
Our friends are talking about one thing, this story. It's hit a real nerve.
[reporter 1] Real estate executives, a lawyer, doctor and a litany of CEOs,
all facing criminal charges.
[reporter 2] An FBI investigation called Operation Varsity Blues.
Operation Varsity Blues.
[reporter 3] How are you after the scandal?
-[reporter 4] Are you sorry? -[reporter 5] Singer designed the scam
and collected tens of millions of dollars.
[reporter 6] Parents paid him top dollar to pass their kids off as star athletes.
-[reporter 7] Rick Singer. -Rick Singer.
-[reporter 8] Rick Singer. -[reporter 9] Rick Singer.
[reporter 11] The mastermind behind the operation.
[reporter 12] It is sending shockwaves across the country.
[alarm ringing]
[tense music playing]
[Singer on phone] The money goes into my foundation as a donation.
[John Wilson on phone] To your foundation? Not to the schools.
[Singer] Yeah, that way the kids don't know it happens, right?
You make a financial commitment.
What school you want may determine how much that actually is.
[Wilson] And so, in terms of things that are more than half million or 300,
what's that set of schools?
[Singer] So that's, uh, Georgetown, Boston College, Georgia Tech,
USC, UCLA, Berkeley, you know.
[Wilson] Okay, that's… that's not bad.
[Gordon Caplan] She's not a terrific student.
She's been testing very badly.
[Michelle Janavs] She's smart. She's gonna figure this out.
She already thinks I'm up to, like, no good.
[Wilson] Uh, is Harvard easier 'cause of legacy?
[Singer] No, it's not.
-[Wilson] That doesn't mean shit? -[Singer] Your legacy means zero because…
[Wilson] Unless we're donating to a building, huh?
[Caplan] I went to Cornell.
I've already given around $750,000 there.
[Singer] Let's be frank, right?
Your 750 is diddly-dink in the world.
I know people who have given $50 million to Cornell.
[Jane Buckingham] Uh, will you send me where and how I should send the check?
[Singer] Oh, yeah. We'll send it so that you get your IRS tax write-off.
-[Buckingham] Even better. -[Wilson] What if they don't get in?
[Singer chuckles] You don't have to worry. It's a done deal.
[Wilson] Is there a two-for-one special for twins?
[Singer] John, how are you?
[Wilson] Hey, Rick. You're pretty busy these days, huh?
Yeah, we got early decision coming up.
So, hey, I do wanna talk a bit about your pricing strategy and economic model.
Uh…
I don't wanna force it on you, but I just think it could be helpful.
No, no, uh, yeah.
I have a bunch of schools that we work with directly
and, you know, it's kind of a first come, first served.
So… pick a place you wanna go.
So, if you said Harvard
or Princeton or Georgetown, you know, one of those things.
Well, if you wanna use my side door at Harvard, it's about $1.2 million.
Jesus.
But if you wanna go through the back door, Harvard's asking for $45 million.
-God. -Stanford's asking for $50 million.
-Wow. -And they're getting it.
That's the crazy thing.
They're getting it from the Bay Area and New York.
John, this is how crazy it's gotten.
I'm gonna do over 730 of these side doors this year.
[Wilson] Wow.
And how many schools are you doing those at now?
Just like the top 20 or 50 or…
[Robert Fisher] I've done a lot of wiretaps over the years.
It truly is amazing sometimes what people will say on the phone
when they don't know that the feds are listening.
I know. I know. It's craziness. I know it is.
Then I need you to get him into USC, and then I need you to cure cancer,
and, oh, make peace in the Middle East.
I could do that.
I could do that if you figure out a way to boot your husband out
so that he treats you better.
[woman] That's impossible. That is impossible.
[Fisher] The government did a wiretap on Rick's phone. He didn't know.
He was intercepted talking to many people.
Every working mom comes to me and says, "How do I do it all?"
Well, guess what? You can't.
There aren't many federal cases where you have 50 people indicted for a crime.
So we're trying to get ourselves, like, a 34 on the ACT.
[woman] Yeah. Yeah.
[Singer] So Mark will do that. Really could be a 33.
-Could be a 34. Could be a 35. -[woman] Right.
[Singer] Can you get me a handwriting sample?
-[woman] Yep. -And a signature sample.
-So we can get kinda close. -[woman] Yes.
[Daniel Golden] Rick Singer was the independent counselor
who orchestrated the wrongdoing in Operation Varsity Blues,
and the court documents indicate that it started in 2011.
My own research into Singer's life and career
indicates that, on a smaller scale,
he was deceptive for decades before that.
[Margie Amott] I'd like to think Rick started out
trying to be professional and trying to be legitimate.
For a number of years, Rick was the go-to person.
He was the only one in town who did this sort of thing.
If you wanted information about college admissions, you went to Rick.
I think people were eager to use him. They were excited.
They were impressed and thought, "Wow, he knows the formula."
"He knows the rules. He has the key to the game."
[Akil Bello] If you're a well-to-do parent in a school with 500 seniors,
your child is getting a fraction of the attention you want them to get.
So you do what you do. You apply money to the problem.
You find somebody who will independently help just your child,
and help them through this process.
And that's sort of the genesis of an independent college counselor.
My parents said, "We're hiring an independent college counselor
who can help give you a little guidance on SAT prep,
and help narrow your focus for the colleges you're interested in."
"He'll be a presence in your life
for the foreseeable future, until college applications are in."
[Golden] I believe there were many students he worked with
who had very good credentials,
and he performed the normal services of a counselor
and facilitated their admission to college
by advising them on their essays or their recommendations and so on.
He was the go-to college counselor at that time.
Back then, there weren't many resources.
He had this company called Future Stars. I had many friends that used him.
It was one of those things where you had to do it.
If you didn't, you'd regret it and worry about,
"Did I get into where I wanted to go? Could I have gotten in if I'd used him?"
He always dressed like he had just come from the basketball court.
[Patricia Fels] His idea was that what he was doing was
coaching kids for getting into college,
so therefore he dressed like a coach.
[Amott] He used to walk around in his athletic clothes,
and his little monk hairdo.
He wasn't necessarily charismatic.
Didn't crack a lot of smiles. Was pretty serious.
Very shrewd. Businesslike.
He didn't chat much. He wasn't very personable.
There are people you meet who feel like they have this vibrating tension
right under the surface all the time, and he was like that.
[Amott] Rick was always drumming up business.
He was always giving presentations at Borders, at the country clubs.
And I also knew what his presentations entailed,
and they were promises that he couldn't keep and…
lies.
[Fels] I would hear some stories from kids that made me think
that he was a little bit fishy.
A little bit slimy.
I have one acquaintance who said that Rick started offering him,
"Hey, I could potentially get you into this school
for a certain amount of money."
[talking indistinctly]
[Golden] Almost from the beginning,
Rick Singer was cutting corners, at least in a small way.
The word I got from people who knew him in Sacramento
was he was exaggerating and fabricating on kids' applications.
You know, changing their race from white to Latino
or African American so that they could qualify for affirmative action.
I mean, he was quite brazen.
Because I was always suspicious of Rick Singer, I started to keep a file.
I started copying things off his website.
"The Singer Group has developed into one of the US's most successful
life coaching and consulting businesses."
"Within a year, operations launched in Singapore, Bangkok,
Philippines, China, Japan and Korea."
Rick Singer was frequently telling lies about his resume.
Somebody told me that he pretended he'd been a board member of Starbucks.
The more he got away with it, the more he did it.
[reporter 1] We're still on the preliminary part of the case.
But both indictments brought against him were incredibly detailed.
[cell phone rings]
-There appears to be a lot of evidence… -Yeah.
[Singer on phone] Is this Gordon Gekko of Wall Street?
No, it's Gordon Caplan. How are you?
I'm just kidding with you. How you doing?
Yeah. Yeah. Good.
[reporter 2] Corporate deal lawyer Gordon Caplan,
a partner at the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
[Caplan] The US tax system has two fundamental components
which makes this somewhat alluring.
My wife has told me a little bit about what you guys do.
Uh, could… could you just give me a little bit of background?
[Singer] Okay. So, who we are.
We are a $290 million company that I own,
with a thousand employees across the US, 280 internationally.
We help the wealthiest families in the US get their kids into school.
We have every NBA owner, every NFL owner.
We've got everybody.
Now, these families, they want guarantees.
They don't wanna be messing around.
They want this thing done. So they want in at certain schools.
So I've done 761, what I would call, "side doors."
The "front door" means getting in on your own.
The "back door" is making a donation, which is ten times as much money.
I've created this kind of side door in
because with the back door, there's no guarantee.
They're just gonna give you a second look.
My families want a guarantee.
[officer] I'm a special agent with the FBI.
I'm currently part of a squad that investigates economic crimes,
including various forms of corporate fraud, securities fraud and bribery.
The facts in this affidavit come from my personal involvement
with this investigation.
Hi, my name is Rick Singer, and I'm the founder of The Key.
[officer] Rick Singer founded and operated The Key,
a for-profit college counseling and preparation business.
He also founded The Key Worldwide Foundation,
a non-profit corporation that is exempt from paying federal income tax.
Rick Singer told parents that he could facilitate their children's admission
via what he termed "the side door,"
a special arrangement in which the parents would make a donation to his foundation
to conceal the fact that they were bribe payments.
Between approximately 2011 and 2018,
parents paid Singer approximately $25 million
to bribe coaches and university administrators.
This is America. Like, you got money?
Best believe you have access to certain spaces that other kids don't have.
So I'm… I'm really not surprised…
[Jon Reider] Over the last three or four decades,
higher education has become increasingly a commodity.
Something that you purchase. A product.
It's a goal in and of itself, rather than the goal being to get an education.
It's become a status point.
Your status has now increased
because your child is at what's called an "elite institution."
It's all about bragging rights.
The running line in our industry is like, "The parents are applying to college."
"The kid is the vehicle through which they apply to college."
If you're a freshman, I'm sorry,
because you are gonna be thrown into a world where they're gonna be like,
"College, college, college."
"Go to college. You have to get the best grades."
"If you're not, you're gonna feel like a failure. You're the worst."
If you're a parent and you didn't go to Harvard,
this is your chance to now go to Harvard, right? In your warped mind.
[Bello] It's typically accepted that Ivy League institutions
are the "best" in the country.
But all of those differences have almost nothing to do
with the academics of the institution.
U.S. News started ranking colleges in the '80s,
based on one criteria: prestige.
That's it. [chuckles] That's it.
"Prestige" is actually a French word.
In the original French, it means something people don't realize.
It means "deceit."
That's what prestige is in the college.
It's imaginary. It's an illusion. Yet people believe in it.
It's not just population growth
that makes it harder to get into colleges today.
The colleges themselves have brought it about.
Because the more selective they look on paper, the higher ranked they are.
Everything these schools are doing is massaging to try and up the rankings.
And it's a really dangerous game.
[Golden] Most people see college admissions,
"Oh, it's based on merit except for affirmative action for minorities."
My view of the admissions process is all sorts of different preferences,
with, yes, some students getting in on pure merit,
but many others getting in due to preferences that skew rich and white.
One is by preferences for students who play niche sports,
like sailing or fencing or horseback riding,
which most kids never get a chance to try.
Then there's making a huge donation to a university.
That gets them noticed by the fundraising office,
which will recommend the candidate to admissions.
Jared Kushner was the son of a very wealthy real estate developer
in New Jersey.
At the time Jared was applying to college,
his father pledged $2.5 million to Harvard,
and Jared was admitted to Harvard,
even though by all accounts he was an average student
who wasn't necessarily taking the toughest courses in his high school.
A lot of the colleges won't actually guarantee the admission,
which is interesting.
So you might write a check for $3 million, and the kid could be rejected.
If you're not writing a $10 to $20 million dollar check,
it doesn't move the needle enough for them.
[Golden] Singer didn't demand the kind of money that is required today
if you want to absolutely guarantee your kid's gonna get in.
You know, these parents paid Singer $300,000, $400,000, $500,000.
What he sold and what they bought
was essentially a certainty of admission at a bargain basement price.
So I'm gonna make him a kicker.
He does have strong legs. Maybe he'll become a kicker.
-You never know. -Yeah. Absolutely.
You could inspire him, Rick.
You may actually turn him into something. I love it.
[chuckles] Yeah. I know.
-Bill McGlashan, good to see you. -Nice to be here.
TPG Growth is a firm people don't know that much about.
[reporter] TPG Growth is the $4 billion growth arm
of the private equity giant TPG Capital.
The more successful the business is, the more impact you're creating.
You get the virtuous benefits of sustainable, scalable capitalism at work.
[Singer] Last year I had a boy, I made him a long snapper.
I love it.
He was 145 pounds. Long snapper.
[chuckles] So what I'll probably need is,
if you guys have any pictures of him playing multiple sports,
that will be helpful, because I will photoshop his face onto a kicker.
[chuckling] Okay. Okay, let me look through what I have.
Pretty funny the way the world works these days, it's…
unbelievable.
[reporter] Devin Sloane, he's a California businessman, an executive.
We've had the good fortune of knowing you
and sharing smiles and joy and laughter together.
[Singer] Last year, I had a boy who did the water polo.
When the dad sent me the picture, he was too high out of the water.
Nobody would believe anybody could get that high.
[McGlashan] Yeah.
[Singer] So I told the dad, I said,
"What happened?" He said, "He was standing on the bottom."
I said, "No, no, no, no, no."
Yeah, exactly. You gotta be swimming. Exactly.
-That's right. -Now, does he…
Here's the only question. Does he… Does he know?
Is there a way to do it in a way where he doesn't know what happened?
Well, what I would say to him, if you wanna have that discussion now,
is say we have friends in athletics who are going to help him.
Because he is an athlete.
But I can't say that in front of my son 'cause he knows he's not.
What he would know is that I'm going to take his stuff
and get him some help, okay?
That he would have no issue with,
you lobbying for him, you helping use your network.
-No issue. -You don't have to tell him a thing.
[Agustin Huneeus] Is Bill McGlashan doing any of this shit?
Is he just talking a clean game and helping his kid?
-He makes me feel guilty. -[Singer] Um…
Or you taking care of him because you have other interests with him?
No. No, not at all. It has nothing to do with his--
But he didn't know. His kid had no idea.
He didn't have any idea you helped him on the ACT.
-That's what he asked for. -Bill McGlashan?
Asked for his son not knowing.
-Okay. -All right.
-So he's not been as forthcoming. -With me?
With you and with his own kid.
He wants it that way.
[Singer] Your guy Agustin?
[McGlashan] Agustin Huneeus, yeah.
He's pushing hard, trying to find out your guys' approach with your son.
He came to me, and I said I did not…
I was not willing to talk to him about it.
He's been pushing me, too.
He obviously wants to get your help, you know, with his daughter,
and I just said, "You need to make your own call what you wanna do,
and you just need to talk to Rick and work with Rick."
No, that's good.
He's pushing hard. Like, "You gotta tell me what they're doing."
I said, "Listen, this is their situation, and Bill is very connected.
You need to discuss this with Bill, not discuss it with me."
Well, he tried that. He tried that.
Just so you know, he sort of had a conversation with another family
about the side door approach you have and was sort of suggesting,
"Do you think this is right?" And I just said,
"Agustin, you shouldn't be talking about this.
What Rick does is very specific to circumstances."
And it just bothered me he's out there talking about it.
Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. And that's…
And that's what worries me, too.
I said, "Listen, you are in a very competitive environment."
"You have to keep what you do to yourself.
It will blow up on you.
No matter who you think you know, it doesn't matter."
That's right, and he's not discreet at all.
That's why I wasn't comfortable talking to him about it.
-Good. -Right.
Rick Singer provided reassurance.
The reassurance that other people just like you
are going through this thing.
"I've dealt with this a million times."
Rick was like a therapist or a life coach,
only he was also a criminal.
[Justin Paperny] My profile of Rick Singer is he's a born salesman.
He was smooth and subtle,
not overbearing, and knew that he had time.
It's not like someone has to get into school today.
It's not like the test is tomorrow. They have time.
So he nurtured the process well, like a good salesman does.
So what sport would be the best for them?
Is… is crew the best? Is that even gonna really matter?
For me, it doesn't matter.
I'll make him a sailor or something because of where you live.
[reporter] Massachusetts businessman John Wilson.
He runs a private equity firm.
He's accused of paying more than a million dollars
to try to get his kids into elite universities.
And same kinda deal? Any sport? You don't have to play the sport?
[Singer] That's correct.
Now, um… what if they don't actually get in?
[chuckles] You don't have to worry about it. It's a done deal.
Okay. That's great.
Okay. I'll send you the information about the bank and the wiring stuff
in the next day or so.
All right.
Oh, by the way, mark your calendar for next July
if you want in on, uh, Paris.
-Got a big birthday July 19. -Okay.
-I rented out Versailles. -[chuckles] Oh, my God!
You're crazy.
I know. A black tie party there, so you'll have to come.
One of the amazing things about Rick Singer is that this guy,
from a kind of obscure background and without a lot to show on paper,
insinuated himself into quite a high social circle,
and made an awful lot of money doing it.
My sense was that Rick Singer had a somewhat unhappy childhood.
His parents divorced when he was young.
He was bright. He had the gift of the gab unquestionably.
After childhood, he went to several colleges.
After that, he went into coaching.
But his problem was he was too volatile, particularly as a high school coach.
He tended to scream at the players if something went wrong.
Kind of like the Bobby Knight of high school coaching.
When Sacramento State had a bad year, they went 4 and 24 one year,
the whole coaching staff was fired, and that included Singer.
That's when he looked around and he said,
"Maybe basketball coaching isn't for me after all.
I've gotta switch careers."
And he noticed this new industry of independent college advisors,
and he became the first one in Sacramento.
It's interesting how his background, in a way, prepared him for this scandal.
If you think about it, as a basketball coach in college,
he had firsthand exposure to how athletic admissions worked,
and that was knowledge that undoubtedly he put to use years later
in his efforts to bribe coaches to portray kids falsely as recruited athletes.
He knew athletic admissions from the inside.
[Singer] Hey, John. How are ya?
Hey, Rick. I'm okay.
I'm here in a big rainstorm in Saudi Arabia.
-[Singer] Saudi Arabia? -[Wilson] Yeah, I'm in Dubai.
[Singer] I didn't know they had storms like that out there.
[Wilson] Yeah, I know. Very unusual. What's happening?
So I just gave the Stanford sailing coach $160,000 for his program.
While we were having that conversation, I said,
"Hey, I'm hoping that this 160 I'm helping you with
helps secure a spot for next year."
"Can I be guaranteed a spot for next year?" And he said yes.
-All it takes? -No.
-No, that's not all it takes. -[scoffs] Yeah, okay.
This is not TJ Maxx or Marshalls or something like that.
-Right. -So I want you to have first dibs.
If you want, I can provide John Vandemoer with a check.
I can send him your $500,000 to secure a spot for one of your girls.
John Vandemoer, he was kind of lured out to Stanford.
He was a successful sailing coach on the East Coast.
My name is John Vandemoer.
I am the head coach of the Stanford University sailing team…
By all accounts, he seemed like a good, upstanding guy.
There were a lot of people that were surprised, who knew him,
that he got caught up in this.
[man 1] SF1, take eight, soft sticks.
[man 2] Audio good?
[man 3] Almost clear. All clear. Thank you.
[man 2] Okay.
Did you ever imagine yourself in this situation
before any of this happened?
Never. It's a lot. It's something I don't think I've fully comprehended yet.
Um…
But it's something that'll impact the rest of my life.
I first got connected with Rick Singer through a phone call.
He called me one day,
he introduced himself, said he was a college recruiter,
and was interested in doing more with smaller sports.
So I thought it was intriguing and agreed to meet with him the next morning.
What I thought was interesting is that I was expecting him to text me or call me
when he got to Stanford.
Because Stanford has… It's very secure.
You have to have a keycard to kind of swipe in and out of every door.
And somehow he just showed up at my door.
I was shocked by that, but it definitely told me
he had connections with Stanford that were deeper than myself.
Rick Singer is kind of your California beach bum, in a way.
Flip-flops, T-shirt, shorts.
He was actually really easy to talk to. I had really good conversations with him.
He was really engaging and drawing me in.
Our interaction was solely about recruiting.
The way recruiting works at Stanford is
each sport is given a certain amount of spots that you can support.
He kinda ended with him talking about this young woman named Molly Zhao.
Hello, everyone. I am, um, 17 now. I've just graduated from high school.
[Vandemoer] Rick said that she really wanted to go to Stanford.
My recruiting was pretty much done at that point.
So I wasn't considering her for a spot I could support, and I had told Rick that.
He contacted me almost right away and was like,
"Is there any other way you could support?"
"Her family is pretty wealthy."
"They'd be interested in donating about a million dollars."
My athletic director said that it's something Stanford could do,
but that a million dollars wasn't enough to really have an impact with admissions.
So that was it. And I didn't hear anything from Rick for a while.
In August of that next year,
Rick called me up out of the blue and said, "Hey, this is fantastic."
"Molly got in, the family's so excited. Thanks for all you did."
I said, "Great. I'm excited for her."
"It's a big deal to get into Stanford. But I didn't really do anything."
He said, "Well, they're really excited and wanna donate $500,000 to your program."
I said, "If they wanna donate $500,000 to the sailing program for me doing nothing,
that sounds great to me."
I see no evidence that John did do anything to get Molly Zhao into Stanford.
Why did Rick Singer donate $500,000 in the name of Molly Zhao?
Only Rick knows the answer to that.
It may have been a huge down payment
for access to the Stanford sailing program.
[Vandemoer] He sent the check. I got it in the mail at my campus mailbox,
and I went in to Development and told my athletic director
I'd gotten this $500,000 donation.
She was excited for me. We talked about how
I hadn't done anything for it, it was out of the blue.
But, you know, I guess that's the best kind of donation.
At the same time, the head athletic director for Stanford was there, as well,
and said congratulations, was excited about it.
I started to explain, "Hey, it's through this guy, Rick Singer."
He turned to me, interrupted me and said, "Oh, I know Rick."
[Billy Witz] I think what we see here is school administration officials
want to keep the money coming in.
They don't wanna ask questions of how it got there.
And I think we definitely saw this in the case of Stanford.
When you'd have $100, $200, $500,000 donations
that would come in for something like sailing,
that that wouldn't raise any red flags or wouldn't be scrutinized.
It seems as if Singer targeted sports that were under the radar
because the margins are tighter.
He knew the right places to look.
So I've got two kids at Stanford and two kids at Yale.
I'm trying to find out who's stepping up first.
[Rudy Meredith] Okay.
Don't matter. 'Cause I might have a spot for both of 'em.
-Really? -Maybe.
[reporter] Yale soccer coach Rudy Meredith pocketing more than $860,000 in bribes.
[Meredith] You can come in an Ivy League environment and develop as a player
and still have your Yale degree.
Give me… Give me the names.
I'm working on it.
I got a new athletic director is what I'm trying to tell you.
I'm trying to work it.
Hold on one sec. Let me just, uh…
You know, I have no idea where the hell I am here in London.
Mm-hmm. No problem.
Frickin' hate these one-way street bullshit things.
I know. And you're on the left side of the road. Be careful.
Yeah, tell me about it. Now I'm, uh, at two-three.
Where's four-five?
Where the fuck is it?
Now I'm on the main street again.
I tell you what, I'm glad I live in the US.
[Meredith laughs] It wouldn't be bad if you were in Sweden.
[Singer] Then I gotta find myself a good Swedish girl, then.
[Meredith] All right. Next time I'm in Sweden, I'll take a look.
Tell me what you're looking for, I'll see what I can do.
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you this much.
At my age, it's hard to find the right people.
That's the hardest thing.
[Patricia Logan] I met Rick through my very first time on a dating site.
I'd never been on a dating site before in my life.
And, at 53 years old at the time, I figured,
"All right. It's… Let me give it a try."
There he was, and there I was, and he messaged me, and…
[clicks tongue] it went from there.
When I met him, did I look him up online? Of course. Right away.
And I thought, "Wow, this guy is…"
Other than the poor video quality on his website,
I thought, "This is very interesting, what he does."
My key method unlocks the full potential of your son or daughter
and sets them on a course to excel in life.
I thought, "He's really a go-getter."
"He's really out there doing something good."
I met him out for dinner. It was interesting,
when we first started comparing notes about our pasts,
and we both started working the very same time.
He was 12 and I was 12. [chuckles]
I had a paper route,
and he was the kid that got the older kids to buy alcohol,
sell to him, he'd sell it then for a profit to kids.
So I said, "Okay, I had a paper route,
you're a minor selling booze to minors. Great."
He goes, "Yeah, I was very industrious." [chuckles]
So we laughed about that. And he was charismatic.
He was… interesting.
He was smart.
It was quick. It was like, "Nice to meet you. Great. Good night.
I really like you. When I find time, let's go out again." [laughs]
-[man] Was he pretty serious? -Oh, super serious.
One time I sent him an emoji, the Bitmoji, I said, "Hi."
And he came back with, "You're crazy. Stay cool in school."
Little goofy.
His own family said, you know, I made him laugh.
[laughs] He needed to laugh more.
He was not, uh…
wanting to stick around long.
He was just so very busy with college coaching, house to house.
[Golden] Another characteristic of Singer's
was that, you know, he worked nonstop.
From what his former assistants told me,
he wouldn't spend the night at a hotel.
He'd spend it on an airplane.
And he would be, you know, texting his assistants at all hours of the day,
giving them various tasks.
He was an extremely driven guy.
[Logan] I got the sense he had clients all over the place.
I look back on text messages, and every time we connect, he says,
"I'm in Dallas. I'm in Fort Lauderdale. I'm in New York. Back to California."
He even lived out of a van at times when he was coaching.
He had this big Mercedes-type van thing.
He'd sleep in it 'cause it was just easier.
[alarm beeping]
[Logan] Rick had a passion for just getting up every morning, 4:00 a.m.,
working out, swimming, cycling, running.
That man was like the Energizer Bunny.
I've never seen anybody that would just have so much energy
and go, go, go.
I think he lived on about three hours of sleep a night, from my understanding.
And that was fine with him.
I looked at a lot of his behaviors and realized,
you know, he was hiding a lot.
He had been leading and living this secret life.
No wonder why he couldn't get close to people.
-[Huneeus] Hey, Rick? -[Singer] Hey there.
-Is this a good time? -Yeah. It's good for me.
Okay, great.
My name is Agustin Huneeus.
We're sitting in one of the pavilions,
enjoying a beautiful afternoon at Quintessa in Napa.
And so let's go and taste.
Just walk me through the whole kind of water polo thing again and how it works.
You and I talked about the economics, timing and how all that works.
You and I had a brief conversation about it, but I want to get it straight.
Okay. Okay.
I'm putting together your daughter's sports profile now.
It'll be a water polo profile now.
I take her transcript, test scores and profile
to the liaison for all sports at USC.
Football… Everybody has to go through her.
[Heinel] My name's Donna Heinel, and I am a senior associate athletic director.
I have the…
[Witz] By all accounts, Donna Heinel was a very diligent supervisor
who was really a stickler for details.
She was also getting 20 grand a month from Singer.
And then she… They have meetings every other Thursday,
which are called subcommittee meetings,
where the dean of admissions and two admissions staff go through the athletes.
It could be water polo this week, football next week.
It could be basketball.
It depends on where they are in the seasons and what's going on.
Heinel became the gatekeeper
between the admissions department and the athletic department.
Because the idea was for the students to be treated as recruited athletes,
that's virtually a guarantee of admission.
Some of the fake athletes at USC, it seems like it would be hard to miss.
I mean, there was a 5'5" men's basketball player.
A high school cheerleader was made to look like a lacrosse player.
There was a water polo player who didn't play water polo in high school.
It's pretty remarkable that none of these things raised a red flag.
And on the rare occasion when they did,
Heinel was there to smooth them over with the admissions department.
[Singer] Your daughter will get presented, and if the committee says,"She's in,"
then what happens is Donna tells me she's in, we're good.
Essentially, she's been admitted before she even applied.
At that point, you will send your $200,000 check to our foundation.
Then Jovan will call me and say, "Okay, this is how I want the money split."
You understand my daughter's not worthy to be on that team.
No, no, he's my guy,
and he knows she's not coming to play. He knows all that.
There were four USC employees that were involved with Rick Singer.
One of them was Jovan Vavic, the water polo coach.
Vavic is by far the most successful coach in college water polo.
Vavic has been charged by authorities of accepting more than $250,000
in exchange for helping two students get into USC as water polo players.
[Singer] Donna Heinel essentially puts them on the recruited walk-on list,
which happens all the time.
And they just don't show up for practice, and that's fine.
One of the things Singer took advantage of
was the fact that athletic departments and admissions offices
both take a coach's word
for the athletic caliber of the person they're recruiting.
Is there any risk that this thing blows up in my face?
[Singer] It hasn't in 24 years.
No, I know all that, but the environment…
Like, some article comes out
that the polo team is selling seats into the school for 250 grand.
Well, no, because she's a water polo player.
But she's not.
[Chloe] I'm so scared.
[woman] Check it. No matter what happens, you're gonna be fine.
-[man] You have to face it. -[woman] You have to face it. Yeah.
-You're gonna be fine. I promise. -I got deferred.
[woman] You got deferred?
[sobs]
There's an update in your application portal,
you click on it, and then that letter pops up.
"We appreciate your passion for our school. We're sorry to inform you…"
"…we are unable to offer you admission to Stanford."
[sobbing]
I'm not getting into San Diego or UCLA.
Just makes me feel like shit.
I literally started bawling. Like, it just angered me.
There were a lot of tears, punching the wall, cursing.
I didn't leave my room. I was crying the entire weekend.
I got rejected.
[Priscilla Sands] I have seen a change, and I have seen a progression.
And I do think that students are more obsessed with college.
I'd say most kids are getting plagued by this anxiety, and you can feel it.
They're freaking out when you meet with them.
They're like, "What if this happens?" "What about that?"
"Will they not like me because I wrote this one word?"
It's like they're losing their minds because of it.
Basically, I got rejected by almost all of the colleges I applied to.
It's awful because you think something's wrong with yourself.
When we have children and they apply to colleges, where will they go?
No one's getting into colleges at that point.
It's crazy. Like, USC's acceptance rate just went down three more percent.
It's at 12% now, which is like…
Most students who wanna go to college could find a college.
The problem is
far too many students want to go to the same colleges.
My goals were Ivy League. I wanted to get in that.
And when I didn't get in, I was… just broken.
I took AP bio. I'm taking AP environmental science this year. I…
I'm not interested in it at all.
Just to have this extra leverage that doesn't even help.
[Barbara Kalmus] This is going on in high schools across the country.
How many advanced classes can you take?
You drop orchestra because if you don't do orchestra,
you can take another science class.
There's so much pressure on these kids.
Because if a school offers 15 APs and you've only taken one,
you can cross off the top 50 schools in the country.
You have people who just go home and all they do is homework.
I hate seeing how it consumes people's lives.
I think social media is a contributing factor,
because as soon as a student anywhere has an acceptance,
it goes onto social media,
so it's just another time to sort of feel a punch in the gut.
It's just really shitty to feel like this.
And I know that people that got in are super deserving.
I like to curl my fake lash with my real lashes.
[Fry] Olivia Jade is an extremely successful YouTube influencer.
She had millions of followers watch these videos where she would,
you know, get up, brush her teeth, do her morning makeup routine,
pick out outfits.
So it's this very diary-like thing,
but with the added benefit of branding opportunities.
I created my own collection with Princess Polly.
I get to reveal and announce
my highlight palette with Sephora Collection.
[Fry] She's the child of the actress Lori Loughlin
and the fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli.
They supposedly had both of their daughters, Olivia Jade and Bella,
pose on a rowing machine, and sent these pictures to Rick Singer
and had them accepted into USC as coxswains.
I went to high school with Olivia Jade. I know the school she was at.
I saw a picture of Olivia Jade's sister on the wall with the seniors,
and it was like, "Congratulations for getting into USC."
And then I remember hearing later that Olivia had also gotten into USC.
I was like, "Whoa." 'Cause USC is extremely hard to get into.
So not only one sister, but both of them.
Off to school.
[Loughlin] Bye, Olivia. Have a lovely day.
-I know you're so excited. -I won't. I will not.
Whatever.
[Naomi Fry] There's an Olivia Jade video
where it's the first day of her senior year of high school,
and she's pretty miserable.
I've gone to one class, and I wanna die.
It's so hot in every single room.
I just wanna go home.
Then she returns home and she says, "I've never been so happy."
I've never been so happy to be anywhere in my whole entire life.
Then there's also a nod to a kind of, like, you know, #blessed.
Remember how lucky we are to have an education
and how many people would kill to have a good education.
Or an education at all. So, as much as I hate it…
I still hate it, but I'm grateful that I get to be educated.
Even though I hate it.
Olivia Jade had said that she wanted to drop out of high school,
in fact, when she was a senior.
I told my mom I wanted to quit school. She was like, "That's not happening."
She made me stick it out, and then my dad made me go to college.
Mostly my parents really wanted me to go, because both of them didn't go to college…
-They did all right. -[Olivia] They did fine.
-They did fine. -[Olivia] Yeah.
-[man] They are-- -Hypocrites.
[Fry] It never seemed like she was very interested
in what college could give her.
Why should she be? She was very successful in what she was doing.
Things were going great for her.
[Fry] In November of 2017,
Donna Heinel presented Olivia Jade's athletic profile to the USC subcommittee,
and they approved her admission to the university conditionally.
Less than two weeks later,
Rick Singer wrote an email confirming to Olivia's parents
that she was going to be accepted at USC
and told them to keep it hush-hush until March.
The guidance counselor at Olivia Jade's high school became suspicious
because he didn't believe either of the sisters participated in crew.
According to the government, Olivia Jade and her parents
discussed how to avoid the possibility
of the high school counselor disrupting their admissions scheme.
Olivia Jade asked whether she should list USC as her top choice school
and Lori replied, "Yes, but it might be a flag for the weasel to meddle."
Presumably referring to the counselor.
And Mossimo added to that, "Fuck him," and said that he was a "nosy bastard."
Things began to unravel when Olivia Jade's counselor
had a phone call with a USC admissions official.
[man] Conducted routine counselor call with USC
to check up on the dozens of applicants that year.
When we got to Olivia,
USC said she was flagged as a recruit for the crew team.
I told them I had no knowledge of Olivia's involvement in crew.
Based on what I knew of her video blogging schedule,
I highly doubted she was involved in the sport.
[Fry] Somehow Mossimo found out what the counselor had said to USC,
and went to the school to confront him.
[telephone ringing]
[man] I received a call from the front desk
that Mr. Giannulli was downstairs and wanted to talk to me.
When we sat down in my office,
he aggressively asked what I was telling USC about his daughters
and why I was trying to ruin or get in the way of their opportunities.
His tone made me visibly nervous.
[Fry] Word of the confrontation got back to Donna Heinel at USC,
and she left a voicemail for Rick Singer cautioning about the situation.
[Heinel] Yeah, hey, Rick, look, I just wanna make sure that,
you know, I don't want the… the parents getting angry
or creating any type of disturbance at the school, okay?
I just wanna make sure that those students,
if questioned at the school, that they respond appropriately,
that they're walk-on candidates for their respective sports,
that they're looking forward to trying out for the team
and making the team when they get here.
That's what I just… wanna make sure of.
I don't want anybody walking into their high school
and, you know, yelling at counselors.
That'll shut everything down.
[Golden] The scandal did surprise me
because it reflected a kind of blatant illegality.
Bribing college coaches to pretend that their children were athletes
when in fact they weren't.
Why would a college coach jeopardize their job and their reputation
to let somebody in for a bribe?
[Vandemoer] Fundraising was certainly a big part of my job.
Funding going to the football and basketball programs
are pretty extreme compared to what a smaller sport like sailing gets.
The school isn't making money by having a sailing program.
It's great they offer it for students, but that program is in the red.
That money has to be either made up for in donations
or the school is just writing a check for salaries, equipment, travel.
[Vandemoer] My dream would be if my job was just to coach.
All told, I was horrible at fundraising.
It's not something I really like to do.
But it was done out of necessity.
It was always a struggle to kind of survive.
In December 2018, all the head coaches are gonna meet with the senior staff.
It's a big deal, that meeting.
In 11 years, I'd met the senior athletic director a handful of times.
I'm in the athletic director's office. There's, like, six of them there.
We'd just won a national championship less than a month earlier,
and the athletic director hadn't even recognized it.
Didn't say congratulations, didn't reach out to the team, nothing.
Didn't say congratulations during that meeting.
The only thing he was doing was watching TV.
He was facing, you know, four or five screens on a wall
and was watching basketball.
The only time he looks up at me and starts really asking questions
is when it comes to fundraising.
Like, "You're doing a great job of fundraising."
"Keep that up. That's really helpful."
Then he goes back to the television. That's it for the whole meeting.
[man] This is someone that knew Rick Singer.
Yes. Yeah, he told me he did.
Rick really was pushing me hard to really take a look at this student.
He was really interested and knew I wanted a second assistant coach,
and I was struggling to fundraise for that position,
and he said, "Hey, through my foundation,
I would like to donate $110,000 to the program
to get you through a year or two of funding that position."
He's like, "No strings attached."
"I just wanna continue our relationship and keep bringing people to you
and have you look at 'em."
I said, "Great. That's fantastic."
[Fisher] I think this was a slippery slope for John,
and he didn't knowingly wake up and say,
"You know what? Today I'm going to join this racketeering conspiracy."
But all the government have to prove is "Did you accept the money
in exchange for something that the giver of the money wanted
and didn't duly earn, didn't deserve?"
The biggest factor in the Stanford coach's case
was he didn't personally enrich himself.
The proceeds that he received furthered the sailing program at Stanford.
Rick Singer was skilled at leveraging off people.
He had a sixth sense to exploit
and find vulnerabilities of people he was working with.
From my understanding, in the Felicity Huffman case,
he told Felicity,
"Your daughter's scores aren't good enough to get into this school."
Turns out that was made up, false.
The daughter would've gotten in regardless.
It's identifying those pain points.
Felicity can begin to rationalize.
"Am I a good enough mother? Have I spent too much time on my career?"
"Don't you want your daughter in a good school?"
Leveraging off the weakness, the pain point.
No, his grades are not good enough to get into SC.
-[McGlashan] Is that right? -Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
That's amazing.
Wow. Okay.
What would her chances be without this process?
-[Singer] Zero. -She won't get in?
Zero. She has no chance.
What he did well, like what a good marketer does,
he sold the benefits.
It's very simple.
"Would you like your daughter to go to Harvard?" "Yes."
"Great. If you'd like your daughter to go to Harvard, do this.
Here's the reality. Your daughter's not scoring that well,
been mentoring her for two years.
The kid doesn't get it. If she's not Harvard material,
and you want her to go to Harvard, we gotta take a different path.
Here's that path. We'll have someone take the test for you."
"What do you mean?"
"This guy, for $15,000, is gonna take the test."
This is absolutely unheard of.
To make this happen, I can make scores happen,
and nobody on the planet can make scores happen.
Your kid won't even know it happened. It will happen as though…
She will think she's really super smart and she got lucky on a test,
and you got a score now.
It's the homerun of homeruns.
-And it works? -[Singer] Every time.
[both chuckle]
What is the… What is the number?
The number on the testing is $75,000, okay?
It's $75,000 to get any scores you wanna get on the ACT or SAT.
If you wanna get into an elite university in America,
on the ACT, which is scored out of 36,
if you're not really in the 34, 35, 36 range,
or on the SAT if you're not sort of 1500 and above,
you're probably not in the conversation.
[Reider] For many years, the SAT was explained
and advertised as being an aptitude test.
A very prominent, predictive feature of getting a high test score…
is family income.
The college board and the ACT have admitted this for years.
This is not a secret that's being divulged.
If I were appointed czar of American college admissions,
I would abolish standardized testing.
It would mean that all of these wealthy test prep companies
would have to find something else to do.
Register your son or daughter for the Princeton Review's 1500+ course.
It's a game-changer.
There's a fair warning around test preparation. This is a business.
Every claim they make is marketing driven.
We even offer a guaranteed score improvement of at least 150 points.
So you have people out there who are making claims like,
"We'll improve your score 500 points."
That's worth $1,000 investment.
But it's only worth $1,000 investment if you have a disposable $1,000 to invest.
[Reider] All standardized testing
automatically advantages the people who are already advantaged.
Most affluent people are accessing people like me,
and 85% of America just can't access that level of expertise.
A private college counselor's gonna run you,
on the low, low, low end,
and you're not getting a quality college counselor, 200, 300 bucks an hour.
On the high end, you're talking about $500 to over $1,500 an hour
to access these guys and gals, and it's a lot.
-Hello? -[woman] Hi, Dad.
[Bello] When you look at it in light of the scandal,
when you have predominantly rich families
who had every advantage that said they should be fine on the SAT,
they're gonna score in the highest demographic,
they had all the prep in the world that they wanted, and yet they still…
cheated.
Okay, the first thing we need to do, and I think I mentioned this to your wife,
we need to get your daughter tested for a learning difference.
Let's say it's my person who does it, or whoever you wanna do it.
I need that person to get her 100% extended time over multiple days.
[Bello] When you take the SAT or the ACT, it's a timed test. Right?
There are restrictions on how it's delivered.
To account for learning disabilities, often accommodations are provided.
You have to have certain medical documentation
of the need for these accommodations.
And that's one of the avenues that Rick Singer exploited.
I also need to tell your daughter, that when she takes the test,
to not be as…
To be stupid.
To not be as smart as she is.
The goal is to be slow,
to not be as bright as she is, all that,
so that we show discrepancies.
At the academy, kids are getting extra time all the time.
-[Caplan] You mean the Greenwich Academy? -Yeah.
Everywhere in the country.
What happened is, all the wealthy families figured out,
"If I get my kid tested and they get extended time,
they can do better on the test."
Most of these kids don't have issues. But they're getting extra time.
The playing field's not fair.
No, it's not.
I mean, this is… I…
To be honest, it feels a little weird, but--
I know it does. I know it does.
But when she gets a score and we have choices, you're gonna be saying,
"Okay, I'll take all my kids. We're gonna do the same thing."
And a score of… You would think that would be…
[Singer] The score will be whatever we want it to be.
So, again, and keep in mind I am a lawyer,
so I'm sort of rules-oriented.
Doing this with you, no way… She's taking the test. It's…
It's her taking the test, right? There's no way any trouble comes of this?
Nothing like that?
So, I, uh…
I explained this to you before.
[Caplan] I… I know.
-And I apologize, but it's just-- -[Singer] No. I get you.
-Bear with me. -[Singer] Okay.
I will explain to you the process.
You're going to fly to LA and go on a fake recruiting visit.
You'll visit some schools while you're out here.
Then what'll happen is Mark, who is the proctor, will fly in,
and he'll show up on Friday night, just like you guys would.
On Saturday morning, at eight o'clock, you guys will show up at the school.
Your daughter will go in and take the test.
Mark will be your proctor.
She'll be the only one taking it in the room with Mark.
What we do with kids who have learning differences
is they write their answers on a separate sheet to the side of it
so that we can rebubble.
She'll think that when she's done with the test,
she has taken the test. No doubt about it.
She'll walk out the door and she'll say to you,
"Dad, it was so hard," or, "I'm so tired,"
or whatever the typical reaction out of the kid.
You guys will leave, and then Mark will look at all her answers.
Mark will then take the exam
and then ensure that whatever score we decide that we want to get,
he has it down to a…
It's unbelievable what he can do.
She'll never know that this actually occurred.
She'll look at her results and she'll say, "Oh, my God, Dad, I got a 32."
[reporter] He's the test-taking whiz
who helped dozens of high school students cheat on their college entrance exam.
Mark Riddell was the one who was flying out to different testing locations
and proctoring or correcting answers.
I have a client whose daughter was a big tennis player
and studied with him years ago.
He was a Harvard graduate who worked in college exam prep for IMG Academy,
which is a school for athletes in Bradenton, Florida,
where Serena and Venus Williams went.
[Andy Lockwood] Very unassuming guy.
But the story was after he had his first child and needed more money,
that's how he kind of got caught up in the pitch from Rick Singer
to make a few extra thousand dollars here and there.
He did not have inside information about the correct answers.
He was just smart enough to get a near-perfect score on demand.
If Rick Singer is the linchpin of this college admissions scandal,
then Mark Riddell is the brains.
[Bello] One of the things that amuses me and annoys me
when I see most of the reports around him being a test-taking savant,
or whatever they choose to call him in the moment, um…
He's an adult who's taking a test designed for 11th graders.
Anyone worth their salt in the test preparation industry
should be able to do what he did.
The question is would they be willing to do it.
[reporter] Singer, the admitted mastermind behind the scheme,
paid Riddell $10,000 per test
to fly from his home in Florida to test centers in Texas and California.
[Bello] Pretty much everything in the higher ed system
is based on trust in other people.
At what dollar value will you be willing to compromise your ethics?
That's the ultimate question.
For me, it keeps coming back to, it's the wealthy who have the ability,
and, in this case, the means and the willingness,
to take advantage of these things.
[Janavs] Rick, I had a question for you.
I was able to get my younger daughter the multi-day ACT.
[Singer] Good. You got her extended time over multiple days. Got it.
Yeah, so I got that.
The thing is, my younger daughter is not like my older daughter.
She's not stupid.
If I said to her, "Oh, we're gonna take it up at Rick's,"
she's gonna wonder why.
[reporter] Michelle Janavs,
whose family created the famous snack Hot Pockets,
accused of paying 100 grand to boost her daughter's ACT score
and get her into USC as a bogus volleyball recruit.
[Janavs] How do you do this without telling the kids?
Well, in most cases, Michelle, none of the kids know.
Right, but how…
No, I understand she won't even know, but how do you explain it to her?
You don't have to say anything.
For the school, say you'll be up in LA for the weekend.
[Janavs] That's what we did last time.
My younger daughter is the issue, because she'll say,
"Like, why am I taking it up there?"
You'll just say that, "You're going to do it up here
because it's really easy. It's convenient."
I thought the conversations that were recorded on tape were achingly poignant.
You ache for the children who read these transcripts,
and you may also ache for the parents who, I'm sure,
bitterly regret being so candid.
She's smart.
She's gonna figure this out.
She's gonna say to me…
She already thinks that I'm, like, up to no good, and I just…
I didn't wanna talk about this with her.
No, no, yeah, I got it. I totally get it.
[Janavs] She's totally different than my older daughter.
Like, she really needs to think that…
My older daughter was like, "I don't really care."
"This test is bullshit. I don't wanna take it."
And my younger daughter is actually studying to try to get a 34.
So it would…
It would actually be a great boost to her.
My older daughter, she came to me and she was like,
"You're not gonna tell my sister, are you?"
And I was like, "No."
It's weird.
It's just weird family dynamics, but every kid is different.
Cool.
[Golden] Rick Singer's lifestyle did change and become more lavish.
He moved from Sacramento area to Newport Beach
and had a very nice house there.
Singer invested in a whole bunch of quixotic ventures.
Restaurants, a soccer team, and many other things.
So the money came in fast
and it seems to have gone out pretty fast to his lifestyle and his investments.
[cell phone ringing]
[Logan] Rick called me out of the blue and said,
"I haven't talked to you in a year.
I remember you being extremely sharp with marketing
in the restaurant business, in real estate.
I think you'd be perfect as opening up and running
one of my offshoot companies of my coaching business."
And I thought they sounded great.
Rick had invited a group of us to a big conference up in LA
with all these very high-powered individuals.
From my understanding, there was an influx of many millions
coming in to help him launch some of these businesses.
We all were assigned our positions,
and then we all took off to start up these brand-new companies.
It was really exciting.
Rick offered to drive us back to the airport.
[chuckling] So we get in his Tesla, and it's rush hour traffic.
Rick is zipping in and out of traffic, going 90 miles an hour.
We were on the edge of our seats, hanging on.
So we finally get to the airport in one piece.
He said, "Bye. Good to see you again. I'll see you soon."
Go to give him a hug, and he plants a kiss on me. [laughs]
And I said, "What was that all about?"
And he says, "Well, I wanted to see.
Maybe there's something here. Maybe we could date."
I looked at him and said, "You know what? I knew you from back when.
The amount of time that you spend with your career, with your businesses,
the little amount of time you'd even have to return a phone call,
let alone send a two-line text is… We'll never work."
My name is Rick Singer.
My job is to life coach kids and families
through the process of getting into college.
We have families in Champaign, in Miami.
They send their plane to come pick me up, come to the meeting for a couple hours,
put me back on the plane, send me to the next place I need to go.
It's amazing.
[Logan] When I watched that video that he sent to do this reality show,
it was a bit shocking to me.
We work in the home of all these families, so we know them intimately.
I know what their bedrooms look like, what the laundry room looks like.
How they get along. So I know where…
I thought, "Really? You're gonna put yourself out there like that for this?"
It just didn't make sense. Everything was so private with him.
The whole time they're yelling, "It's my life!
If you go to this school… It's the wrong school.
I don't wanna pay 50,000 to go to this school!" Unbelievable.
It just didn't make sense,
especially at the caliber of the coach that I, you know, believed that he was.
He didn't have a lot of time for people in his life.
He was married for years, and he has a son.
When I met him, he was divorced probably six, seven years.
He'd say, "I'll only do this coaching
for another three, four, maybe five years, and then I'm done."
I don't know. I really don't know what made him happy
or what his desires even were.
It's almost like on a rat wheel,
trying to get to a means to an end, and there was really no end in sight.
[Caplan] So I… It's just you and me. I mean, is that kosher? Can we--
[Singer] Absolutely.
Part of the reason I'm taking my wife off this,
she's very nervous about all this, and I just…
Uh, I wanna have a… um… Let me ask you straight up.
You've never had an issue with this? No one's ever gotten in trouble with this?
Never had an issue with anybody.
[Caplan] Could you ever see that happening?
I'm not…
I've never seen it happen.
[Caplan] What I'm asking is could this ever get back to my daughter
or to the family?
I mean, this comes out… I, uh…
[chuckles] I don't… I don't even wanna know what you guys do.
I'm just… Uh, Rick, so you… you understand--
No, I totally get it.
[Caplan] You're absolutely confident there's no issue here?
[chuckles]
We've been doing this for a long time.
[Caplan] Let me put it differently.
If somebody were to catch this, what happens?
The only way someone can catch it is if you guys tell someone.
-[Caplan] I'm not gonna tell anybody. -Well?
[Caplan] It's just…
To be honest, I'm not worried about the moral issue here.
I'm worried about the…
She gets caught doing that, you know, she's finished.
So I… I just, uh…
It's never happened before in 20-some-odd years.
The only thing that can happen is if--
-[Caplan] Someone talks. -Yeah, if she tells somebody.
[Caplan] Oh, yeah. I, uh… She… She won't talk.
Singer didn't make a fateful mistake that led to his being, uh, exposed.
What happened is that somebody was arrested
on an unrelated securities charge,
and that person traded information.
That financial executive said,
"You may be interested to know that a coach at Yale asked me for a bribe."
A gentleman by the name of Rudy Meredith,
who had been working with parents to get their children into Yale
under the guise that they were going to be soccer players.
The first question they ask Mr. Meredith
after they investigated and indicted him was,
"Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"
"Yes, there is. There's a gentleman named Rick Singer
who I'd like to introduce you to,
and I'm happy to cooperate against him because I don't wanna go to prison."
So just like that, Rudy Meredith is a cooperating informant.
Then he cooperates against Singer.
[cell phone dings]
Thank you.
Hi, Rick.
Why don't you step inside?
[door creaking]
[Singer] It will happen as though…
She will think she's really super smart and she got lucky on a test,
and you got a score now.
It's the home run of home runs.
-[Caplan] And it works? -[Singer] Every time.
[Singer and Caplan chuckle]
[agent] Singer agreed to cooperate with our investigation
and to be interviewed.
However, he was not fully forthcoming regarding parts of his scheme,
and it was my impression that he was not taking
full responsibility for his conduct.
Singer told us that the payments he and his clients
made to university athletics programs were donations.
We informed him that a payment in exchange
for recruiting a fake student athlete to an athletic team is illegal.
The next day, after consulting with his attorney,
Singer agreed to consensually record phone calls
with other individuals involved in his scheme.
For those calls, we instructed Singer to engage in a ruse.
[Singer] Uh, so the reason I'm calling is, uh, so,
uh, my foundation is getting audited now.
-Oh. Well, that sucks. -[Singer] Uh… Yeah. Right?
-They're going back like they always do. -Yeah.
[reporter 1] Elizabeth and Manuel Henriquezof Atherton.
[reporter 2] They're accused of paying $400,000 in bribes.
So they're taking a look at all my payments.
They asked about the large sums of money that came in from you guys.
[Elizabeth] Okay.
-[Singer] Essentially-- -For all the good deeds that you do.
[Singer] Absolutely. Of course I didn't say anything, you know?
I'm not gonna tell the IRS that Mark took the test for Isabelle, or that Gordie--
[Elizabeth] Mm-hmm, right. Yeah.
[Singer] Or that Gordie… Uh, we paid Gordieto help get into Georgetown, right?
Right.
[Singer] So I just wanna make sure that you and I are on the same page.
-Okay. -[Singer] In case they were to call.
So what's your story?
So my story is essentially that you gave your money to our foundation
to help underserved kids.
-[Elizabeth] You… Uh… Of course. -[Singer] And, uh…
[Elizabeth] Those kids have to go to school.
Absolutely.
Okay.
[Paperny] I'm not surprised at Singer's level of involvement.
Much like he seized an opportunity to enrich himself
to help get their children into school,
he equally seized another opportunity to earn cooperation credit.
He was just as zealous in cooperating
as he was in getting parents to pay him to get their kids into school.
-So there's no paper trail of money? -No, there's no paper trail of money.
Right.
So why did Isabelle do the test in Houston?
We gotta get into that story.
So let me go into it. Uh…
Essentially, there's nowhere where anybody knows,
because, in my books, it doesn't show that there was any money paid to Mark
for taking the test for Isabelle. Okay?
It doesn't show anything at all in our foundation or anything.
Just so you know.
Right.
So the question is, uh, if anybody calls me, the response is,
"No comment on the Houston issue."
Remember, she went there because she needed special--
-I understand. -Accommodations.
Accommodations.
But I'm not gonna comment.
We gotta be very careful getting inbound calls.
"I've no idea who you are,
so I won't respond to an inbound call from anybody."
[Vandemoer] Rick said, "I wanna continue our relationship."
"I wanna call you in a week, and talk about another donation
like I did with the $110,000. I'd like to continue to do that."
I said, "Great." So he was true to his word.
He called me a week to two weeks later.
I was rushing out the door,
but he's talking to me the whole time on this call.
I'm just "yeah-ing" him to death.
He said he wants to donate $160,000 right now, and he'd give the rest later,
to continue a deposit on our relationship.
The only word I really picked up was "deposit."
I took it as his deposit on a relationship
was that he would bring me more recruits to consider.
And we'd see how it would go from there.
Then I didn't hear anything from Rick again and still haven't, actually.
That was the last conversation we had.
That phone call was set up by the FBI.
It turns out that was the most, uh…
tragic and most devastating phone call of my life.
[Singer] I wanna make sure we're confirmed that,
going forward, I'm going to at least potentially have a spot with you.
It'll probably be an athlete like the other student who wasn't an actual sailor.
[Vandemoer] Okay.
I'll put together a profile for her,
and, uh… put all the major regattas that I come up with from the Internet,
and bring someone to you.
-Then we'll make a payment to you again. -[Vandemoer] Great.
[man] As someone who's defending somebody,
how did you feel hearing that tape?
Um… [chuckles]
It wasn't good, um, from my point of view.
Um…
And it would have been tough at trial. Tapes are…
When I was a prosecutor, I did a lot of wiretaps.
And I played a lot of wiretap calls or tapes.
And juries love hearing wiretap calls.
They can be good evidence. I explained that to him.
I heard the call. I thought this was a good one,
and it could be tough to explain.
[Singer] So I wanted to let you know, our foundation is… is being audited.
Yeah.
-[Singer] Which is very normal, right? -Yeah.
[Singer] They've been auditing my foundation.
Okay.
-[Singer] Which is pretty typical. -Uh-huh.
-[Singer] My foundation is being audited. -Uh-huh.
Like everybody on the planet, huh? [chuckles]
[man] Sure.
So they've been looking at…
[Fisher] This wasn't a typical sting operation.
If you look back at the larger, white-collar cases,
Enron, for example, the leadership is indicted.
Maybe the CEO, the CFO, uh, the COO, and then, really, the indictments end.
Traditionally, a large RICO indictment like this is gonna be organized crime.
If you're going after a syndicate that deals drugs,
you start with local level dealers, flip one of them,
get a wire, work your way up to the middle-level dealer,
and you end up with the kingpin.
Here, Rick Singer was selling the product, and yet you had him first.
Then you worked your way down the chain to get the buyers of the product.
[Singer] They started an audit on my foundation.
Yeah.
-[Singer] Which is typical, right? -Okay.
-[Singer] Which is pretty natural. -Yeah.
[Singer] I'm gonna tell the IRS
that your donation to our foundation essentially went--
Wait, wait, Rick. Let me ask you a question.
Shouldn't we get together over this as opposed to over the phone?
[Singer] Whatever you wanna do. I'm fine.
All I'm gonna tell the IRS is that your donation to our foundation
went to help underserved kids. That's it.
[Sloane] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[Paperny] In listening to some of the tapes of Singer,
he's as skilled as I've ever heard
of getting someone to acknowledge wrongdoing.
Yeah, he was pretty good on the phone,
but that's only gonna work with these white-collar professionals.
Historically, white-collar defendants have almost no filter on the phone.
We know people at Goldman Sachs who, you know, recommended you highly.
My husband and I laugh every day about how great your work was.
We're like, "It was worth every cent."
If he was talking to organized crime members,
he would have been made as a cooperator within 30 seconds on the call.
So, what I want is to make sure that you and I are both on the same page.
Because I'm going to tell them
that you made a $50K donation to my foundation to help underserved kids.
Not that Mark took the test for your daughter
or that she took the test at the West Hollywood test center.
What do you think, I'm a moron?
No, I… I'm not saying you're a moron. The point is that--
[Huneeus] I got it, Rick. I got it.
I'll say I've been inspired,
how you're helping underprivileged kids get into college. Got it.
Hey, Rick. I…
You know, I don't…
You know, whatever you do, you do, you know?
I really don't feel comfortable talking to you about this
in terms of kind of, you know, your…
In terms of…
In terms of kind of your… You know, your dealings.
[reporter] Stephen Semprevivo, a Los Angeles businessman,
paying $400,000 to get his son into Georgetown as a fake tennis recruit.
You know, all I know is that we used you for the charity stuff
and we used you for the counseling,
and your dealings are your dealings. And so, you know…
[Singer] No, I get that. I understand that.
But at the same time, we were all a part--
No, I don't agree with that at all.
You don't agree that we got him in through tennis?
[Semprevivo] I don't. I don't. I…
You know, you did what you did, and that was your stuff, okay?
-Okay. -You did what you did.
I won't take accountability for it. You need to be accountable for--
[Singer] Absolutely. I'm absolutely accountable,
that I got him in through tennis, and that you guys were aware of it.
I'm totally aware of it and I accept total responsibility
that I used my relationship and made your son a tennis player.
We all agreed that that's what we were going to do.
You know, I don't have any details,
but I think you need to be accountable for what you did.
So I don't wanna talk about this anymore because, you know…
I think there were two separate things.
And we used you, and we donated.
We donated as a charity, and it was a good charity.
We were excited we could help.
In terms of how you do favors for people separately,
that's, you know, I…
We appreciate any help you gave us.
But, you know, we used you in terms of the…
In terms of your college stuff.
We paid you well for the work you did there separately.
So… And we appreciate it.
So I think that…
If you're trying to turn something around
in terms of what you did and how you did it,
then I don't wanna be…
I don't wanna be a part of that.
You know, I'm so paranoid about this fucking thing you were talking about,
I don't like talking about it on the phone.
I mean, I'm thinking, you know, are they…
I can't imagine they'd go to the trouble of tapping my phone,
but would they tap someone like your phones?
[reporter] Real estate tycoon Bruce Isackson and his wife Davina
paying $600,000 to help their two daughters
get into UCLA and USC
through the test cheating scheme and the athletic recruitment scheme.
Worst case, we'd get a call from them and they'd say to you,
"Prove you gave this money…"
-They'd ask for some. -But you did.
[breathing heavily] Yeah.
But… I'm just thinking that…
Oh, my God. [sputtering] Because you're thinking…
If they get into the meat and potatoes, is this gonna be a front-page story?
Well, the person who'd be on the front page--
[Isackson] Yeah, but will I… But… But if…
If they got into the meat and potatoes, which a guy would love to have is…
Look how hard it is for these kids to get into college and…
Look what's going on behind the scenes.
And then… you know, the embarrassment to everyone in the communities.
My God.
It'd just be, uh…
God, just…
Oh…
[Vandemoer] Fast forward a couple months, we go through the Christmas season,
we get a knock on the door at 7:00, 7:30 in the morning
and it's two women.
They kinda hold up badges and say,
"I'm from the IRS," and "I'm from the FBI."
I said, "What's this about? What can I help you with?"
"Oh, we just have a few questions in terms of college admissions and so on."
I said, "Whatever I can do to help."
The FBI agent started asking questions about Rick Singer.
I described our relationship, that he brought me recruits,
he was donating, and they said,
"No, that's not what it was. It was you taking bribes."
They kinda wrapped up with saying that,
"Stanford knows about this. They're really angry with you."
They gave me their cards and they said goodbye.
I promptly went upstairs, sat down on my bed and cried.
I didn't know what happened.
John Vandemoer reached out to me. He was in need of an attorney.
There was such a sense of urgency.
"You have to meet him before next week.
We have to know if he's gonna take a plea deal or not within 48 hours."
He flew in the red-eye.
I'd never met him before, but he just looked… He was tired,
and obviously extremely upset at what was about to happen.
And he says, "So it's not good. You're being charged with mail fraud,
tax fraud and wire fraud."
"Each of those counts carry a 20-year sentence in prison."
The allegation is that he joined Rick Singer's conspiracy,
the object of which was to help these students, who were not sailors,
get recruited for his team so they would gain access or admission to Stanford.
In exchange for that,
Rick would wire him money or mail a check, or hand him a check.
That triggers the wire fraud and the mail fraud.
[Vandemoer] They already had Stanford willing to testify against me.
Rick Singer was gonna testify against me.
I didn't really have any evidence on my side.
Between my wife and my dad and I,
we kinda decided that it made sense for me to plead guilty,
um, and be a felon for the rest of my life.
[Fisher] When you plead guilty, you must meet with the Department of Probation.
He was being interviewed.
[Vandemoer] At the time when I was in that interview, that's when the story broke.
We're here today to announce charges in the largest college admissions scam
ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
We've charged 50 people nationwide.
[Witz] I was in Las Vegas covering some conference basketball tournament
when I got a phone call early in the morning from an editor saying,
"What are you doing? Whatever it is, drop it and get to Los Angeles."
Breaking headline of that massive college cheating scandal late today.
Dozens of actors, coaches and CEOs are among those charged.
[Fisher] And my phone started blowing up.
[Vandemoer] My lawyer was looking at his phone the whole time,
and it was like, you know, "This is huge."
Thirty-three parents have been charged, including Lori Loughlin…
[reporter] Authorities arrest Felicity Huffman
at her Hollywood Hills home.
They had guns drawn and everything.
[reporter 2] Raids on the homes of the rich.
[officer] FBI!
Every single one of these parents should be in jail.
How the schools fell for these photoshops…
Use your heads, people. That's not…
Olivia Giannulli was famous for her presence on social media.
Now she's become target number one for public outrage.
[reporter 3] Her famous parents are charged with spending
half a million dollars in bribes to get their daughters into USC.
I started watching Olivia three years ago.
I've been watching pretty much every single one of her videos.
She goes and cheats to get into school?
And takes a spot from possibly one of her own fans?
She lost a lot of her sponsorships.
They discontinued a makeup palette that she did with Sephora.
[cameraman] Hey, Olivia. How are you?
How are you after the college scandal? Have you been speaking to your mom?
[Fry] In a weird way, she has almost become a bigger celebrity because of this.
[cameraman] Olivia, it's good to see you back out and about.
Feeling confident?
People attacked her on Instagram and her comments were flooded with stuff.
[girl] She can look at people's comments on the Internet
and be, "They're just trolls." No.
I'm not trolling you, dude. I'm pissed.
I'm disappointed in you.
And, um… the only thing I have left to say about this…
[reporters clamoring]
[reporter] John Vandemoer agreed to accept more than $600,000 from Rick Singer,
the alleged mastermind of the college admissions scandal.
A neighbor texted me and said, "Are you reading those articles?"
"Do you see who it is?"
And it was, "Oh, my gosh, it's Rick Singer."
I started jumping up and down.
I said, "I can't believe it."
"I can't believe they caught the guy. I cannot believe it."
The messages I was getting on my phone, the news alerts,
it really was, I thought,
an overwhelming reaction to a criminal case.
[Vandemoer] Walked outside, which wasn't a good idea.
There was cameras in my face, questions being blurted out.
-[reporter] What made you plead guilty? -[Vandemoer] It was overwhelming.
It was a mob scene.
[Vandemoer] You're not allowed to have your cell phone in the courthouse.
I checked my phone, and I have an email from Stanford telling me I'm fired.
I didn't have a paycheck anymore, or health insurance.
Most importantly, my kids' daycare,
the roof over our head, was on the Stanford campus.
The same school that was my victim.
[man] Any message to your former athletes? They looked up to you.
[Vandemoer] I also made the mistake leaving my social media on,
and it's just… hate.
I got a couple death threats on the phone.
Anonymous folks sending messages
that they were upset at what they thought he did.
I was the "worst fat fuck" that they've ever seen in their life.
"How did I ever fit in a frickin' sailboat?
How could I do this to Stanford?
I should just fucking die and go away."
The week that it broke, we got a call from a Chinese guy
who wanted to pay $10 million to get into Harvard.
[chuckling] I was like, "Man, have you read the news?" Like…
This is the worst week to make this call.
When the story broke, I was getting ready to go into a meeting,
and I got a call from a friend of mine, and he says,
"Hey, who's the guy you worked for at the getting-into-college company?"
I said, "Rick Singer. Why?"
He says, "You gotta be kidding." I said, "No, why?"
"Turn on the news. Go on Facebook. Go on Instagram. Whatever."
[chuckling] "Just open up your phone and look."
And I couldn't believe it.
There's a videotape of Rick just walking solemnly
with all these reporters, and not looking at anyone,
and my…
My heart just sank. It just sank.
[Vandemoer] Finally, it was time for me to go in.
It's my time to be sentenced.
Rick was still in there.
We literally have to cross each other right away.
Rick, of course, doesn't look me in the eye or anything else.
It just, uh…
I'll never forget that moment when we walked by each other like that.
My heart was pounding.
Um, sitting between my two lawyers and the judge comes up
and "conspiracy racketeering" is what I end up pleading guilty to.
[Fisher] Judge Zobel understood that this was a guy
who really cared deeply about his students
and there was no need to send him to jail.
[Zobel] Mr. Vandemoer is probably the least culpable
of all of the defendants in this group of cases.
Certainly the parents are in a different position.
The other coaches benefitted for themselves.
He did not do that.
[Vandemoer] She gave me six months of home confinement, two years of probation.
And I got a $10,000 fine.
I think, for John, that was truly the right decision.
And he didn't have to serve time.
He's home with his kids. He's bettering himself.
He's going back to school. He has a job.
He seems, when I talk to him, that he's in a much, much better place.
I believe, in Stanford's victim impact letter,
they said they're still in possession of over $700,000 in donations.
Neither me or any associates working for me at the firm
could find any case where the victim of a racketeering conspiracy,
at the end of the conspiracy ended up $770,000 richer
than they were at the beginning of the conspiracy.
[Amott] Rick Singer is back in Sacramento.
He drives around town. He's still in his athletic clothes.
He doesn't look any flashier.
He swims twice a day at a local tennis club.
And he gets out of the pool in a Speedo,
does yoga, push-ups, and he's on the phone.
Sometimes he has multiple phones.
My understanding, he's telling people that he's not gonna go to jail
because they know the judge, etcetera.
Again, knowing Rick Singer, you don't know what to believe.
You don't know if he believes it or if it's an outright lie.
Um, you know, he's plead guilty to four felonies.
I just have to believe he's going to go to jail.
[man] Is the system broken? Any comment on anything?
[Fry] There's a video in which you see a guy with a mic
trying to get Rick Singer to answer questions, and he just stonewalls them.
Can any good come out of this, Rick?
[Fry] He seems unperturbed by these people trying to interview him.
It makes you wonder about the levels of his regret.
He's a bit of a cipher in his attitude about this whole affair.
You seem comfortable. You're taking your time here.
Did you really work with over 700 families?
Rick, is the system broken?
[reporter 1] Actress Lori Loughlin of Full House
was sentenced to two months in prison.
[reporter 2] Her husband, Mossimo Giannulli,
was sentenced to five months.
[reporter 3] Actress Felicity Huffman received 14 days behind bars.
[Kalmus] No good will have come out of these sentences or out of this scandal.
The fines they've been given, meaningless.
In terms of hitting them in their pocketbook,
what a difference it could have made if we hit them hard
and put that money to work for underprivileged kids.
That would have been amazing.
Then you can say at least some good came of it.
I try not to blame the families or the parents.
I tend to focus the criticism on the colleges
and universities that created this system.
If they didn't have these loopholes
and these preferences for families of privilege,
then I don't think there would be these kind of temptations.
This scandal is not necessarily a reason for colleges to change their ways.
Because it makes the colleges seem more exclusive and desirable than ever.
If all these rich people are willing to go to these incredible lengths
and risk jail time just to get their kids into these colleges,
then they must be extremely valuable.
What are we doing to these kids by pounding them into the ground
with "top 25, top 10, top 5"?
Because ultimately, where you do go to school
has little or no effect on what will happen to you in the future.
The United States has over 3,000 colleges.
You have infinite choices.
Forget about USC.
Go someplace else.
You can get a great education almost any place if you want it.
The parents in this case didn't believe that.
Because the bigger school had the prestige,
had the glitter, had the glamour, had the bragging rights.
Why did these parents choose to cheat this
when their children had so much already?
Part of it seems to be when you reach a certain level of wealth,
there's a relentless pursuit of the trappings of power.
You wanna have the fancy car,
the fancy house, whether you need it or not,
and it just seems to me
that the atmosphere created in high-wealth societies
is part of the problem.
In America, we love the wealthy and we hate the wealthy.
They disgust us and they fascinate us.
This story was a perfect opportunity to see how rich people live
and the realities of the system being exposed,
and so there's something incredibly refreshing
to have just a little bit of justice being served in a sea of injustice.
[Fisher] Rick will be living with this for quite a while.
If he didn't cooperate, he would have been charged,
maybe convicted already.
And right now he's out, a free man still.
And his cooperation won't be complete until the very last person
charged in this conspiracy is sentenced,
and that is most likely gonna be a while from now.
[moody piano music playing]