How Rick Singer sold a scam at the university

Singer, 58, of Newport Beach, Calif., Pleaded guilty on Tuesday for racketeering, money laundering, tax evasion and obstruction of justice in a federal court room in Boston.

It was a spectacular ending for a college counselor long sought after by California families for his relationships with high school students and his ability to navigate the process of admission to labyrinthine college.

A 204-page affidavit written by an FBI agent described a scheme involving supervisors who changed the test results, fabricated credentials, and even images that were falsified to give the impression that non-athletic students appeared to be accomplished athletes.

& # 39; This is not an art. It's a science.

But there was also a legitimate side to the business, Hendershot said. In addition to the collaboration in the book, she worked for Singer coaches on their college application essays.

Hendershot said that she felt tremendous pressure from parents for them to write essays for their sons and daughters. "I would not do that – it's a hard line for me," she says.

But once, she said, Rick asked a high school student to write an essay on her experience of growing up in destitution as the son of a single mother.

Celebrity scandal: Felicity Huffman released on bail after allegedly buying for the child to go to college

"The child was very nervous, very angry," Hendershot told USA TODAY. "It was a personal statement about his experience of growing up in poverty, and I was literally sitting in a house when he showed it to me." Rick had been telling him for weeks to write this essay saying that he was a poor student but the kid was having trouble writing it because he could not imagine what it was like to be poor. "

She said the counselor had advised the student to be honest, but he did not know if Singer had submitted the fictional essay.

The cover of Rick Singer's self-published book, "Getting In: Getting Into Your College of Choice", published in 2014 (Photo: The key)

Hendershot said she often met students at home in the wealthy neighborhoods of Orange County, where Singer was also living in a $ 2.6 million Spanish-style house, one kilometer from the jetty. from Newport Beach. "They're all mansions or McMansions," she said. "Views of the back bay, custom built, some think these are Frank-Lloyd-Wright homes."

But she said she was unaware of the rigging trials and corruption of coaches alleged in the unsealed indictments on Tuesday.

As a ghostwriter, Hendershot collaborated with Singer on two books but said she could not discuss this project because of a confidentiality agreement.

"It's been 26 years since I trained students in the process," wrote Singer in his self-published book Getting in. "I am one of the people who decides who comes in and who does not come in. I am a practitioner of this mysterious art, and I will tell you a secret.

"It's not an art – it's a science."

Enter through the "side door"

How it worked: False disabilities, photoshopping of faces to bring rich children to elite colleges

"What we do is help the wealthiest families in the United States to educate their children," he said. "They want guarantees, they want this thing to be done, they do not want to disturb that, and so they want to get into some schools, so I did what I would call" the side doors. " .

"There is an entrance door which means you enter yourself.The back door is an institutional development," becoming a major college contributor, "which represents ten times more money And I created this side door in.

"Because the back door, when you go to institutional advancement, as you know, everyone has a friend of a friend who knows someone who knows someone but which has no guarantee, they will just take a second look at you.My families want a guarantee. "

"And it works?" asked Gordon Caplan, the parent of a girl related to the university.

"Every time," said Singer.

They both laughed.

Caplan, 52, is the co-chair of an international law firm based in New York, Willkie, Farr & Gallagher. He is charged with paying $ 75,000 for Singer to arrange a test supervisor who changes his daughter's ACT test responses. Neither Caplan nor his law firm responded to a call.

The Caplan case shows how much the arrangement could be worked out. In the wiretapping conversation, Singer told Caplan to have her daughter tested by a psychologist and told her "to be stupid" so that she could be diagnosed with a learning disability and dispose of more time to take the test.

Singer then arranged for the girl to come to West Hollywood, California, to take the test because there was a supervisor who would participate in the program. But Singer said the process was designed so that no one would be suspicious – and even children who pass the test do not know anything about cheating.

"She will not even know it happened," he said, according to a FBI transcript. "It's going to be as if, she would think she's really very smart, and she's been lucky at a test, and you have a score now, there's a lot of ways to do that. do anything and everything, if you are likely to do it. "

Beginning as a basketball, softball and tennis coach in Sacramento, Singer began recruiting at universities and eventually started a business in the growing field of academic advisers. He founded Future Stars in Sacramento before selling it and joining Money Store, a West Sacramento home equity lender, and managing call centers.

Subsequently, he founded CollegeSource, charging between $ 1,500 and $ 2,500 a year for home-based consultations with high school students and their parents. He praised a network of academic and philanthropic leaders well placed on its advisory board.

One of them was Ted Mitchell, then president of Occidental College and now president of the American Council on Education. In a 2005 Sacramento Business Journal profile, Mitchell supported Singer.

"Rick has an encyclopedic knowledge of colleges and universities in America," Mitchell told the newspaper. "More importantly, Rick is really good at understanding what kids and families want – and finding the right partner."

Mitchell could not be contacted for an interview on Tuesday, but his office sent a statement following the announcement of charges. "If these allegations are true, they go against the essential principle of a fair and transparent college admission process.This alleged behavior runs counter to the fundamental values ​​of our institutions. , who defraud students and their families, and have absolutely no place in American higher education.

Singer's most recent venture was officially called Edge College & Career Network LLC, but Singer simply called it "The Key."

He took the title of CEO and Master Coach and described it as "the largest coaching and university consulting company in the private world".

"This remains to be debated," said Brooke Daly, who said he had never heard of Singer before Tuesday. And she would have: she is president of the Higher Education Consultants Association. The organization, which has 1,000 members, has a code of ethics that prohibits advisers from providing job placement or commission guarantees.

"There is an exponential growth in this area of ​​university consultation," she said. "People like him, unfortunately, give a bad name to our company."

She said that families already had the impression that the college admissions system was rigged or that there was a secret.

"Parents are going to have a heightened sense of fear of needing to know who is at home to get into the best possible college," said Daly, founder of Advantage College Planning in Raleigh, NC.

"I'm not going to tell anyone"

Singer's criminal plan to bribe college coaches and doctors' admission tests began even before he legally incorporated The Key in 2012, federal prosecutors said. He also created a charitable organization, the Key Worldwide Foundation, which prosecutors said have the custom of laundering "donations" to college officials in order to secure an investment.

In some cases, prosecutors said Singer had paid sports coaches to book a sports admission slot that students had not even practiced, including a football coach at Yale and a tennis coach at Georgetown. Sometimes, the photos of athletes were treated with Photoshop.

The FBI's affidavit is full of transcripts of wiretap conversations in which parents eagerly accepted. Many of these conversations took place after the FBI turned Singer into an associated witness.

In many conversations, the parents seemed to be cold-hearted before Singer assured them that he had done this kind of thing hundreds of times.

"Let me say it differently: if someone catches it, what's going on?" Caplan asked him.

"The only one who can understand it is if you tell someone," Singer said.

"I will not tell anyone," Caplan said.

They both laughed.

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