‘Varsity Blues’ College Admissions Scandal Mastermind Rick Singer Breaks His Silence

“Everything the FBI and the U.S. Attorney and everyone else in the world says I did? i did itRick Singer, 64, told Fox News in his first interview about his sensational “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal.

Not long ago, Singer was one of the most talked about and controversial men in the country. Today, he lives quietly in a halfway house in Los Angeles, where he hopes to finish the remainder of his 42-month sentence after pleading guilty in 2019 to racketeering, money laundering and obstruction charges.

Singer says he can leave the halfway house most days to work with a restaurant group.

“I’m the guy that hides in plain sight. Nobody knows who I am,” Singer told Fox in an exclusive interview in Los Angeles. “Now, someone will recognize me and I can hear people talking. But no one cares.”

Singer’s charity, the Key Worldwide Foundation, billed as a way to help underprivileged children, poured in at least $25 million in what Singer calls “donations” from celebrities like actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, with the hope that Singer would work his magic to make it happen. their children to elite schools.

Huffman pleaded guilty to his role in the crimes and served eleven days of a two-week sentence in a federal prison in California.

Loughlin pleaded guilty and served two months in a federal penitentiary in California.

Federal prosecutors say the donations were bribes and conducted an extensive undercover investigation called “Varsity Blues” to destroy Singer and his accomplices.

According to an investigation by Fox News, at least 50 people had pleaded guilty or been convicted in the college admissions scandal by October 2023.

“I want to apologize profusely to all the families I’ve hurt, all the kids I’ve hurt. The administrators I’ve hurt. My own family,” Singer said in an exclusive interview in Los Angeles.

Singer’s elaborate scheme centered around creating falsified college student applications and embellishing them with fake test scores, sports experience and doctored photos.

Singer recruited a network of college coaches and administrators to help him perfect the fake applications, and they accepted Singer’s money in what he referred to as “side door” deals.

When Singer’s plan first became known, the country erupted. Parents and critics alleged that Singer robbed countless students of their guaranteed, well-deserved spots at some of America’s top colleges and universities, including Georgetown, the University of Southern California and the Yale University.

The Singer scandal became a monster media sensation, sparking months of news coverage, books, TV specials, and a Netflix documentary featuring actual taped conversations between Singer and his clients.

Despite the rejection and outrage, Singer, now a convicted felon, insists he never took a place from a deserving student. Instead, he says, his scheme exposed a budget tactic that institutions of higher education depend on: locking up certain “spots” on athletic teams and within departments from everyday applicants and reserving them for willing big donors to pay the entrance of a student.

“90 percent of the time, coaches call me every year saying, ‘I have a spot open.’ I need to raise this amount of money. … Find me a family,’” Singer said.

When asked specifically how he did the most damage, he said he was ruining people’s names.

“The biggest thing is the reputation … that they worked so hard to create and build and be great people,” Singer said.

Singer admits to his crimes, admitting that he considers cheating the most brazen part. But he says college admissions offices haven’t faced the same intense scrutiny.

“The media missed that you pick them up, they are my partner in this. It takes two parties to play,” Singer said.

Fox News reached out to the three schools Singer alleges he collaborated with the most: the University of Southern California, Georgetown and Yale. Yale has so far responded and declined to comment.

Singer told Fox that he believes he took advantage of one of the three ways a student can get into college.

They can enter through the “front door” with legitimate merit and qualifications, through the “back door” when a family publicly donates massive amounts of money to a college or campus, or through a “side door.”

Singer says he mastered the backdoor method by crafting fraudulent student applications and paying people from inside a university.

“This has been going on for hundreds of years. I’m not that smart to invent this process,” Singer said.

The former basketball coach says he believes his side-door deals were targeted because they were made in private, but questions why major back-door donations that are often given in public with the expectation of favors.

Singer told Fox that his plan started in part with a student in Vancouver. Singer describes the student as intelligent but a poor test taker.

So Singer enlisted the help of Mark Riddell, who Singer says he now feels bad about, by talking him out of $10,000 to falsify the Vancouver student’s final test score.

Ridell became a key player in Singer’s scheme and was also convicted.

“What I can tell you absolutely, what I did that was illegal, was to cheat on the tests,” Singer said.

Singer didn’t reveal exactly how the first test was fooled, but said it involved false identification and described that first execution as a satisfying, movie-like heist that paved the way for his future careers.

Singer, who considers himself a lifelong “coach,” says that aside from his side-door deals, he also always ran a legitimate college coaching business that he claims has helped hundreds of students to enter university Singer says business moguls and Hollywood celebrities have used her legitimate college counseling for their children.

“What I can tell you absolutely, what I did that was illegal, was cheat on the tests,” Singer said.

Singer didn’t reveal exactly how the first test was fooled, but said it involved false identification and described that first execution as a satisfying, movie-like heist that paved the way for his future careers.

Singer, who considers himself a lifelong “coach,” says that aside from his side-door deals, he also always ran a legitimate college coaching business that he claims has helped hundreds of students to enter university

Singer says business moguls and Hollywood celebrities have used her legitimate college counseling for their children.

Before his time at the halfway house, Singer says he spent 16 months in a federal prison camp in Pensacola.

Singer says he’s made friends while incarcerated, many of whom he says were locked up for fraudulent COVID-era PPE crimes. Singer claims that he hardly ever ate a meal in prison. Instead, try to find healthy grocery items to create your own meals.

Singer says he now wants to revolutionize college admissions and education with his new company called ID Future stars, which he says will legally restart his college counseling business without a gray area.

He says he’s also launching a company called Are You The One that will test students to find out their IQ and competitive edge to find out where they fit into the workforce without going to college.

“We have this idea that everyone should go to college and that it’s the right place for everyone. And ‘you have to go to certain schools to be successful.’ And that’s not the truth based on tens of thousands of kids with the which I’ve worked on,” Singer said.

Singer also says she believes experienced mothers who want to re-enter the workforce are a hidden source of reliable employees that have gone untapped.

Singer insists that anything he does moving forward will be done legally and with the review of lawyers, something he admits he wishes he had done all along.

Singer claims he has built such a revered name in the admissions world that parents are still contacting him for coaching and were doing so even during his trial.

“I walk out of court, outside court, and I show my phone to my lawyer. There are 93 text messages: ‘Are you still coming next week?’

Singer admits the clock never runs out on illegal college admissions in the United States.

When asked if he thinks the college admissions system can still be gamed, and if it’s still being gamed today, Singer replied, “Every day.”