Rick Singer, the man who helped celebrities including Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman fraudulently get their kids into elite colleges, wants to return to his gig as a college admissions consultant—but legitimately this time.
The mastermind behind the Varsity Blues scandal, which broke in 2019 and landed him in a federal prison camp for 16 months, this week spoke out in an unapologetic interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Singer is still finishing his sentence at a halfway house near Los Angeles, but he is already laying the groundwork for an above-board foray back into the college admissions world.
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“I am not living in the gray anymore. The gray is over. I was the all-time Mr. Gray,” Singer told the Journal. “Now, I’ve made a concerted effort to live in black and white.”
Singer pleaded guilty to four charges related to his efforts to help wealthy parents cheat the college admissions system. He abused the SAT and ACT testing process, orchestrated fake athletic recruiting that secured admit slots for his clients, and took payments through his fraudulent charity for the purpose of allowing tax write-offs.
The scheme earned more than $25 million, and resulted in the eventual convictions of more than 50 people, including athletic coaches, celebrities, and financiers.
Singer, who had been using illicit admissions tactics for over a decade, attributed the scandal to the size of his own self-image. “I think everybody’s issues, and definitely mine, all come back to our egos. And as things start to roll and you start being more successful,” he said, “your ego grows—your desire grows.”
Singer said that many of the athletic coaches he worked with during the fraud—at schools that included USC, Yale, and Stanford—were more than ready to exchange a spot on their team for funds from the child’s wealthy parents.
“I’m not calling them,” he told the Journal. “They’re calling me, saying, ‘Hey Rick, I got five spots this year. I’m willing to give up one. I need to raise $250,000 or $500,000 to redo my floor to take my team here to fund salaries here or there. I’ll give you one of my spots.’”
“Some coaches wanted the kids to at least play the sport, but other coaches were like, ‘I don’t care if they play, I don’t care what they do,’” Singer added.
Although he maintained that the money exchanged for the spots was a donation and not a bribe, Singer did display some signs of remorse after his prison stint.
“I probably rationalized a hell of a lot,” he said, “and made it like it was not that big a deal. But when you look at it in context, it was wrong. And I know it was wrong.”
Currently, Singer is working on the management team of a restaurant group owned by a family friend, where he says he is “having a great time.”
But Singer has other aspirations. He said he never stopped receiving requests for his college-admissions advice and that he continued working for free even while he was in prison.
Now, he wants to monetize again. The new venture is called ID Future Stars, and Singer promises “reasonable” prices in exchange for totally legitimate help getting kids into the college of their dreams.
“I’m not dwelling on what already happened. I already did that,” he said. “I’ve had four and a half, five years to eat my humble pie and move on. I’m all about moving forward.”
