Operation Varsity Blues
How the cases worked out, why some people got away with it, and why the cases were not caught earlier
As the Operation Varsity Blues cases wind down with the January 2023 sentencings of mastermind William “Rick” Singer and an athletic director, I wanted to look back at how the cases worked out and some overall lessons.
First, of the 57 people charged as part of Operation Varsity Blues, most ultimately pled guilty and were convicted. Four people went to trial and the government convictions in 3 of the 4 cases. Two people managed to avoid conviction.
Forty parents were charged.
Most ultimately pled guilty. One parent worked out a plea deal in which he was allowed to appeal a court ruling; that appeal is pending.
Two parents (Gamal Abdelaziz and John Wilson) went to trial and were convicted; both had been recorded talking with Rick Singer. Both defendants have appeals pending.
Another parent who had not interacted with Singer (Amin Khoury) went to trial and was found not guilty.
One parent (Robert Zangrillo) was pardoned by President Trump while his case was still pending.
Ten coaches and athletic directors were charged.
Eight pled guilty, including Donna Heinel from the University of Southern California, Gordon Ernst from Georgetown, and Rudy Meredith from Yale.
One (Jovan Vavic) went to trial and was convicted by a jury, but the case is complicated. In September 2022, the district court denied Vavic’s motion to overturn the jury verdict, but the court ordered a new trial because of closing statements by the government that the district court found were improper. Both Vavic and the government have appealed, and the case and appeal have been stayed until the appeal by parents Abdelaziz and Wilson is resolved.
One (William Ferguson) negotiated a deal with the government where charges will eventually be dropped if he does not violate the law and fulfills his obligations under the deal.
Seven people who helped arrange and execute the scheme also were charged; all pled guilty. This includes Singer himself, two test-center administrators, one proctor who changed students’ answers, Singer’s bookkeeper, and two others.
The chart below provides more specific information about each defendant.
Two, while a lot of people were charged, many people got away with it. According to government filings, coaches and test-center administrators helped more students than were indicated by the number of parents charged. And while some filings indicated that both parents in at least 16 couples had some involvement in the scheme, only one person in many couples got charged, not both.
How did some people avoid getting charged? This probably comes down to corroboration, which should be a big part of any criminal investigation.
Operation Varsity Blues began, like many cases, with one witness who had great information but whose credibility was questionable. Morrie Tobin, whose name does not show up in any of the Operation Varsity Blues cases, was caught on unrelated securities fraud charges and, to help get cooperation credit from the government, told them about Rudy Meredith, a Yale coach who was taking bribes to help with admissions. The government was able to corroborate Tobin’s allegations, primarily by having Tobin make recordings with Meredith.
Meredith then cooperated and provided information about Rick Singer, which led to wiretaps and thus corroboration about Singer’s conduct. Singer was then confronted and agreed to cooperate. Singer’s word alone would not have been enough to charge and convict many parents, but the government was able to corroborate Singer’s information about many parents in part because Singer got those parents talking on recordings about their present or past crimes.
Ultimately, the government probably made decisions about who to charge based on what they could sufficiently corroborate and prove without relying much on Singer. For example, Felicity Huffman got charged while her husband did not probably because she interacted with Singer more and thus said more in the recordings. This probably made the case against her stronger than the case against her husband, enough to make a difference to the prosecutors evaluating whether to charge each defendant.
Third, the government made a strategic call that may have backfired in some regards. Rather than charging the cases as bribery cases using a mix of federal statutes and state commercial bribery statutes, the government charged most cases as conspiracies to commit fraud. This decision led to complicated arguments about the nature of the conspiracies, whether the conduct really fit within the federal fraud statutes, and whether the universities that admitted students suffered financial harm because of the charged fraud. This decision also may have contributed to lower sentences because of differences in how federal sentencing guidelines handle bribery cases and fraud cases where the financial harm is unclear.
Fourth, the sentences help support some general observations about federal sentencing.
Cooperation can make a big difference at sentencing. Several defendants agreed to cooperate and got no jail time in the end. At the same time, cooperation only goes so far. Tobin was such a significant cooperator that the government asked the judge to not impose any jail time, a very unusual recommendation by the government. The judge rejected this recommendation and imposed some jail time because of the seriousness of Tobin’s original crimes, but Tobin still got much less time than he Tobin likely would have gotten if he had not cooperated.
Also, pleading guilty generally will result in a lesser sentence than going to trial. Federal sentencing guidelines generally give a lot of credit to people who plead guilty because those people show “acceptance of responsibility” and are less likely to commit further crimes. Here, the two parents who got the longest sentences are those who did not plead guilty and who were convicted at trial.
Fifth, and perhaps most importantly for those trying to draw some useful lessons about the case, Rick Singer probably could have been caught years earlier.
Most people who got charged as part of Operation Varsity Blues could have avoided prosecution if they had said “no” to Singer and turned him in. But they did not. Public filings also make clear that some people almost figured out what was going on, including some officials at the University of Southern California in 2014 and a high-school guidance counselor in 2017. But they could not break the case and apparently never called law enforcement.
So, how could the government have caught Rick Singer faster? And how can they catch the next Rick Singer faster? What lessons does Operation Varsity Blues have for institutions? Here are some thoughts.
First, the incentives were not aligned with stopping Rick Singer. Parents saw massive potential upside in going through Singer’s “side door” and in getting their kids higher test scores. They probably saw no benefit to themselves by turning him in, since turning him in would not help their kids get into college and might even hurt their kids. Similarly, coaches and guidance counselors saw little upside to rocking the boat, especially when they were not entirely sure what was going on. Rewards for whistleblowers can help. Whistleblowers often have a long, difficult road to get a reward, but the possibility of a reward at least shifts the cost-benefit analysis for people who otherwise might be complicit.
Second, there were no easy mechanisms to report Singer. Some people might have known whom to call, but most people probably would not know where to start, especially with all the agencies that might have jurisdiction here. The government could make it easier for people to report white-collar crimes, and even to ask whether something weird is a white-collar crime. Maybe one federal hotline number rather than navigating the alphabet soup of investigative agencies or trying to find a lawyer who might know what to do.
Third, there were insufficient checks on unusual processes. Effectively, colleges set up an exception to their normal admissions procedures for athletes and delegated the authority over these exceptions to trusted individuals. But the colleges apparently did little to check up on these trusted individuals, and they did not conduct reviews that might have caught red flags such as large numbers of students who were admitted as athletic recruits but did not end up playing their sport. Audits help. The more trust placed in people, the more important an audit can be.
There are other factors that contributed to people’s complicity and silence, such as people’s feelings that the overall system was corrupt. Part of Singer’s pitch was pointing out the inequities in the college admissions system – his side door looked like a way to catch up to people going through the back door. These are harder things to address, but well worth discussing.
Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to discuss.
Sources: The Department of Justice has a webpage that summarizes the status of all the cases, though without a lot of context or detail (https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/investigations-college-admissions-and-testing-bribery-scheme). The webpage has been updated many times and as of January 9, 2023 does not mention two cases that were previously listed there, so please keep that in mind. I have reviewed many of the court filings with the help of my son, who spent many hours helping me review documents and developed a spreadsheet that tracked all the cases and that I’ve used for analysis here. The Khoury trial, which resulted in an acquittal, is very interesting; defense lawyer Roy Black’s closing argument is online here. If you have any questions or would like to discuss, please let me know - I believe that these cases overall provide a great way to discuss white-collar criminal investigations.
About the Author: Stephen Lee was a federal prosecutor in Chicago from 2008 to early 2019 and is now a solo practitioner focusing on health care fraud, data analytics, and white-collar crime. Before becoming a lawyer, he was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.