Rick Singer’s Activities Led to the Varsity Blues Scandal of 2019<\/strong><\/h3>\nIt must be pointed out that when Rick Singer first began his college counseling companies, it was all legit. He worked hard to get his athletes into shape so that they would qualify for athletic scholarships on merit. Things, however, turned murky down the line.<\/p>\n
By 2008, he had given a series of bribes to a Georgetown tennis coach named Gordon Ernst to help children with little or no tennis history to gain a place on the school’s team and get admission.\u00a0From that moment on, Rick Singer fine-tuned a fraudulent but lucrative scheme. He deliberately courted hedge fund managers, wealth advisers, and people that worked on the board of expensive private schools.<\/p>\n
Through them, he got in touch with wealthy parents that wanted their wards to go to choice schools. These parents paid him thousands of dollars in return for him helping their children get admitted to top colleges. Rick Singer resorted to outrightly fraudulent means to make the admissions a reality.\u00a0He lied about the athletic achievements of these kids in high school and photo-shopped<\/a> fake photos to that effect.<\/p>\nHe also lied on some of their college application essays. In one instance, a white student from a rich family who had never played tennis was held out as an African-American athlete. Rick Singer also went to the lengths of hiring people to take SAT tests for his client’s children.\u00a0He also bribed proctors to change the test answers of his client’s children so that they would get higher scores.<\/p>\n
It was an efficient system, and Rick Singer landed well-known clientele such as Hollywood star actresses Lori Laughlin and Felicity Huffman. Huffman paid him $15,000 to procure a person that would write her daughter’s SAT. Lori Laughlin paid him $500,000 to get two of her daughters admitted into the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n