Varsity Blues mastermind Rick Singer breaks silence with shock new claims about college admissions scandal

Rick Singer, the mastermind behind the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, seemed unapologetic as he spoke out for the first time since being sentenced to three and a half years behind bars.

The 64-year-old lives in a halfway house in Los Angeles, where he is serving the remainder of his sentence after pleading guilty in 2019 to racketeering, money laundering and obstruction charges.

The court heard he took bribes totaling more than $25 million from desperate parents – including celebrities such as Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman – who wanted to get their children into some of the country’s top schools.

He told Fox News on Thursday that he is now “hiding in plain sight” and can leave the house halfway most days for a job with a restaurant group.

“Now someone might recognize me and I hear people talking, but no one cares,” Singer claimed as he reflected on his crimes.

He further admitted that he’s guilty of “everything” he was accused of, but claimed he wasn’t the only one gaming the college admissions system.

Singer said there are three ways students can be admitted to college: through a “front door” with legitimate earnings and grades, through a “back door,” when a family publicly donates huge amounts of money, or through its “side door.”

“This has been going on for hundreds of years, I’m not smart enough to make this process up,” he said.

Singer argued that his “side door” deals were only targeted because they were done privately, and questioned why “back door” donations made in public are more acceptable.

When asked if he thinks the college admissions system can still be gamed – and still is – he said “any day.”

Singer defiantly emphasized that he never took over a deserving student, claiming instead that his plan merely exposed a budgetary tactic that higher education institutions rely on.

He said colleges have blocked certain “spots” on sports teams and within departments for regular applicants, setting them aside for big donors willing to pay for students’ access.

“90 percent of the time, the coaches call me every year and say, ‘I have a spot open, I need to raise this amount of money… Find me a family,’” he claimed, arguing with college admissions officers. have not suffered the same criticism as him.

“The media has missed that the colleges are my partners in this,” Singer said. ‘It takes two parties to play.’

As part of his scheme, Singer paid college admissions administrators, or proctors, to boost students’ test scores and bribed coaches to designate applicants as recruits for sports they sometimes didn’t even play, in an effort to improve their chances of getting into the school enlarge.

Singer even vouched for the fake athletes, such as Loughlin’s two daughters.

But others were not even aware of their parents’ involvement in their college admissions; they took their SAT exam at locations where the exam taker or proctor was on Singer’s payroll.

Once they completed their answers, the proctor changed them to make sure they were correct.

“He was the architect and mastermind of a criminal enterprise that massively corrupted the integrity of the college admissions process – which now favors those with wealth and privilege – to a degree never before seen in this country,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.

At least 50 people have pleaded guilty or been convicted in the college admissions scandal as of October 2023, including the Full House star who pleaded guilty and served nearly two months behind bars, and Huffman, who was sentenced to 14 days.

Singer spent 16 months in the federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, and said he made friends with some of the other inmates — many of whom he said were locked up over fraudulent COVID-era PPE claims.

He said he has almost never eaten prison food and has instead tried to find healthy groceries to prepare his own meals.

Singer admitted, “Everything the FBI, the US attorney and everyone else in the world says I did? I did that.’

He then “apologized profusely to all the families I hurt, all the children I hurt, the administrators I hurt, my own family,” saying he has done the most damage to people’s reputations inflicted.

Singer said he considers his attempts to rig the tests to be his most brazen, describing how his scheme started with a student in Vancouver who was intelligent but a poor test taker.

He said he paid Mark Riddell – who would later become one of his top accomplices – $10,000 to falsify the child’s final score.

Singer would not go into details about how he falsified the test results, but said it involved a fake ID and described it as a satisfying, cinematic heist that paved the way for his future misdeeds.

“What I can tell you absolutely, what I did that was illegal was cheating on tests,” he said.

Singer insisted he also ran a legitimate college coaching company that he claims has helped hundreds of teens get into college.

He said business moguls and Hollywood stars used his legitimate college advice for their children and claimed he built such a respected name in the college admissions world that parents still contact him for coaching, and did so even during his trial.

“I walked out of court – out of court – and showed my lawyer my phone. There are 93 text messages: “Are you coming over next week?”

Looking to the future, Singer said he wants to disrupt college admissions and education with his new company called Future ID Stars — which he said will eliminate the need for high school students nationwide by boosting their IQ, skills and competitive advantage identify and determine their position. they enter directly into the labor market.

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

But, he vowed, anything he does in the future will be done legally with attorney review — something he said he has always wanted to do.