William “Rick” Singer, the mastermind behind the “Varsity Blues” nationwide college admissions scandal — which resulted in the imprisonment and prosecution of actors, CEOs, board members of Singer’s organization and Singer himself — was released from prison in August 2024, and is returning to his work as an independent college admissions counselor.

The inspiration, Singer has said in interviews since his release, was a student he helped gain admittance to college while he was still incarcerated.

According to an ABC news interview aired Oct. 21, 2024, Singer, while serving time at a state penitentiary in Florida, received an email from a student asking for tips. He responded with “pointers” and the student got into his top college in March, Singer said.

This new organization, ID Future Stars (www.idfuturestars.com), features Singer on its website, and boasts an “80 to 96% acceptance rate into first-choice schools.” Singer is photographed and quoted under the “About Us” section.

While admitting he “made mistakes,” Singer said: “The Lessons [sic] I learned from my past experience is to team up with the best legal minds and university institutional partners to help me operate my passion the right way. In my past company, both For [sic] and Non Profit [sic], I utilized my common sense instead of acquiring the appropriate guidance with small and impactful decisions that affected others.”

Singer said that after he had placed his attorney Donald E. Heller’s children into “great schools,” Heller told him: “You were So [sic] stupid, all you needed to do was contact an attorney and he or she would have guided you to register and set up a Lobbying [sic] company for your donations to the university’s [sic], which would have been perfectly legal.”

Singer’s path took foothold here in Sacramento, and then at Sacramento Country Day School.

Past high school staff and faculty of Sacramento Country Day who remember working with Singer, remain skeptical of him. After he was fired as the basketball coach of Encina High School in 1988 for reasons that remain undisclosed, Singer worked as an assistant basketball coach at Country Day from 1992-93, and again as an independent college counselor for Country Day students. Former Head of High School Sue Nellis knew Singer and recalled his confident demeanor.

“He was very friendly but nobody seemed to know what he was doing [as a college counselor],” Nellis said. “Rick tended to come off too self-assured and sometimes his overconfidence rubbed off in the wrong way,” she said. “He left the impression on me that he thought highly of himself and his abilities to get anyone into any college or university.”

Patricia Fels, who worked as Country Day’s college counselor from 1995-2013, first heard of Singer from her students who employed him as their independent college counselor.

“At the time, it was unusual to have a separate college counselor, so when I heard about him, I was mainly surprised that there was such a thing as an independent college counselor,” Fels said. Through her students, Fels learned about the dishonest methods Singer resorted to. A former Country Day student, whose name Fels chooses to keep anonymous, served as vice president of a religious youth group and was advised by Singer to claim that he founded said group.

“Rick told him that nobody would check to see whether he was actually the founder, and sadly, it’s true,” Fels said. “If I had seen this kid’s college application and he had said that he founded his religious youth group, I wouldn’t question it. But the point was that Rick was advising a student to lie in his college application, which is just unethical.”

According to Fels, Singer often told students with Hispanic last names to indicate they spoke Spanish at home, even when it was not true. Fels recalls when this approach backfired for a student — whose name Fels also chooses to keep anonymous — when applying to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). This student, who didn’t speak Spanish, took Singer’s suggestion and lied on their application. After being accepted into UCLA, an alumni group reached out to the student’s family in Spanish to invite them to a gathering. The group later learned neither the student nor their family spoke Spanish. After checking with the admissions office and explaining the situation, UCLA revoked the acceptance, according to Fels.

From then on, Fels became skeptical of Singer’s work ethic. She started warning her students who used independent college counselors to steer clear of Singer. “I think he figured out that I had said some disparaging things about him because some of the parents told me that he would tell kids from Country Day to not tell me that he was their independent college counselor,” Fels said. “I really didn’t trust that guy.”

Certified Education Planner (CEP) Margaret Amott holds the CEP credential awarded by the American Institute of Certified Educational Planners to professionals demonstrating “the highest level of competence in educational planning.” She said she met Singer for the first time at a “College Night” hosted by Rio Americano High School parents in 1993 after he asked to speak at the event.

Amott said Singer presented himself under false credentials, including a doctorate from the University of La Verne, located in Southern California. He ultimately labeled himself an “educational consultant,” Amott said.

“He seemed honest. He seemed persuasive,” Amott said. “He didn’t make great promises or guarantees and he appealed to parents who didn’t have recent experience or knowledge about the college admission process.”

Early in Singer’s college advising career, Amott said she noted discrepancies and mistakes in his work. For example, Singer failed to notice that a recruited volleyball player had not fulfilled their requirements for the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), Amott said. At this time, Singer additionally prepared extracurricular resumes for his students, according to Amott.

“In the ’90s, there was such a thing called ‘candy striper.’ They were hospital volunteers who wore striped apron-type uniforms,” Amott said. “The resume came back and Rick described a candy striper as someone who sprayed stripes on candy.”

According to Amott, as stories and accounts of Singer “falsifying applications” accumulated, she ultimately decided to compile a file on Singer in 2007, consisting of emails between other college counselors in the community and herself (full disclosure: Octagon staff has not seen the files; this is a record of Amott reading the files via an interview). “Every time I got an email from someone saying, ‘Here’s what Rick did,’ I would put it in this folder,” Amott said.

According to former Country Day Headmaster Stephen Repsher, Singer resurfaced on the Country Day high school radar in 2008, this time offering his private college counseling and math tutoring services. Eventually, Repsher learned that Singer would promote his business by slandering the Country Day high school math department, claiming that students needed his help because of its shortcomings. Hearing this, he decided to meet Singer in person.

“I was going to have him come out and meet and he said, ‘Oh, sure, I’ll come out and meet with you.’ He set up a meeting with me and no-showed. He set up another meeting, and he no-showed again, and so I began to get suspicious,” Repsher said. Repsher then began to research Singer after the two failed attempts to meet with him.

“I looked on his website in the meantime to try to see what I could find out about him. He had listed on his website what he called a board of directors. There were probably a dozen names on the list, and some of them were pretty high ranking. It included Charles Young, who was chancellor of UCLA at the time, and also the former president of Stanford University,” Repsher said.

“Again, I got more and more suspicious, because I’m thinking, here’s this small-time operator claiming to have these famous educational luminaries on his board, and I just didn’t think anybody would have the time of day for this guy.” He reached out to former Stanford President Donald Kennedy, who Singer was advertising to be on his own board of directors. Repsher learned that the two had only met briefly at a cocktail party.

In addition to falsifying information on his website, Singer often referred students to a learning disability specialist, regardless of whether they had a learning disability, in order to grant extended time, Amott said. This was extended to the taking of the at-the-time mandatory Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), where Harvard graduate and employee of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Mark Riddell, would proctor and correct students’ tests to submit a high SAT score.

In presentations Singer gave to high school students throughout Sacramento, he claimed that he read applications for the University of Southern California (USC), the University of California, Davis, and Stanford University, Amott said. Troubled by his patterns of deception, Amott and other counselors attempted to verify Singer’s claimed connections with prestigious universities, Amott said.

“We would call USC, we would call Stanford, and we would say, ‘Have you ever heard of Rick Singer?’ They’d say, ‘Who?’” Amott said. “We used to just tear our hair out. There was nowhere to turn.”

Beyond the knowledge of Fels and Amott at the time, Singer created a method he coined the “side door” — a system of bribery that weaponized college athletic recruitment for wealthy families seeking guaranteed admission into elite colleges.

According to an NBC News online article titled “College cheating ringleader says he helped more than 750 families with admissions scheme,” published on March 13, 2019, parents paid $200,000 to $6.5 million for Singer’s services, where he would photoshop students’ faces onto athletes to complete a fabricated athletic application.

The scheme capitalized on the constant fundraising pressures facing specialized athletic programs. Singer directed parents’ donations through the Key Worldwide Foundation — a nonprofit organization founded in 2014 whose mission is to “provide guidance, encouragement, and opportunity to disadvantaged students around the world” — to specific coaches and programs. In return, coaches designated unqualified students as recruited athletes, virtually guaranteeing their admission even if they did not play the sport.

According to the federal indictment, published on March 12, 2019, the fraud network spread across multiple universities and athletic programs, including Georgetown tennis, Stanford sailing, USC soccer and water polo, Yale women’s soccer, UCLA men’s soccer, University of Texas tennis, Wake Forest volleyball, and University of San Diego basketball.

Singer pleaded guilty on March 12, 2019, to conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Singer agreed to cooperate with the FBI in gathering evidence against co-conspirators.

Fifty-five defendants were named, including co-conspirators, parents participating in bribery, and Singer himself. On Jan. 4, 2023, Singer was sentenced to 42 months in prison, with an additional 3 years of supervised release. Of the other defendants, 35 were sentenced to 3 months or less in prison, with 14 serving no time at all. Singer was ordered to pay $19.3 million, roughly split between repayment to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the surrender of money and assets.

When news of Singer’s arrest broke in March 2019, Fels was stunned. “I never expected him to be caught,” she said. “My husband and I were in the kitchen getting our lunches ready. We had NPR on and all of a sudden they started talking about how there was an independent college counselor who had been federally investigated.”

Fels immediately called Amott to share the news. “I couldn’t believe it. You never think that bad people are actually brought to justice,” she said. “We were just exalted. We were so happy.”

On Oct. 21, 2024, ABC News reported Singer had been released from prison to a halfway house “near Los Angeles.” Looking back at families who continued to use Singer’s services despite known concerns, even before the arrest, Fels remains troubled.

“It makes me sick thinking that any parent, knowing what he did, would go to him after that,” she said. “He’s unethical. Why would you have your kids go to him when you know what kinds of things he did in the past? That’s irresponsible parenting.”

Now, nearly 6 years after news of the scandal broke, many families are attempting to distance themselves from their involvement with Singer. “There’s also a lot of revisionist history going on,” Amott said. “Families who utilized his services are claiming they only used them minimally, or that they only used his legitimate services.”

According to records in Amott’s files, Singer’s involvement went far beyond basic counseling. He maintained control of students’ college applications by managing their passwords and submission processes, often completing applications himself before billing parents. Even in supposedly legitimate cases, Singer fabricated achievements, according to Amott. Amott’s files reveal one instance where he transformed an unpublished aspiring screenwriter into an accomplished filmmaker.

“He said that this kid was a screenwriter; that he had written three 10-minute films that had been shown on current television. Well, the student was a screenwriter, but nothing had ever been published,” Amott said. “So even for students now who say, ‘I only used the legitimate part; my parents did not pay money,’ chances are he filled out the application and signed on behalf of them.”

Allegations about Singer’s involvement with former Stanford basketball player and Country Day lifer Robbie Lemons, ’10, resurfaced in Amott’s accounts of events in 2010.

“When he did not get into Stanford, his father was screaming all across town: ‘Rick Singer is gonna go to jail, I’m gonna sue him.’ And nobody quite knew what that meant or why,” Amott said. “Over the period of a few weeks, he was accepted. And then the father was quiet and didn’t talk about Rick Singer anymore.”

Lemons had briefly worked with Singer in his junior year for college counseling after being referred to him by a neighbor. He recalls Singer’s approach as manipulative. “It felt like he was trying to position himself to my family like I was not going to be good enough to play,” Lemons said. “And that he was our only hope, having his insight and his knowledge on the system and his connections. He definitely used negativity and fear as a draw toward his services.”

Lemons parted ways with Singer by the end of his junior year in 2009. He dismissed Amott’s claim, explaining he was first waitlisted, deferred, and eventually admitted as a result of a miscommunication between the athletic department and admissions office about his athlete status after being deferred, then waitlisted — not Singer’s involvement. Lemons’ father did not respond to emails requesting an interview for a response to Amott’s claim.

Lemons went on to play basketball from 2010-14 at Stanford, where he received an athletic scholarship. Today, he serves as the assistant coach and senior director of coaching analytics and strategy for Stanford’s basketball program.

“It’s sad as someone who worked super hard to play, compete in college athletics and to get into a good school,” Lemons said. “It’s disappointing realizing that there was this other inroad, and it was given to people who maybe didn’t work as hard and maybe were not as qualified.”

Despite Singer’s claims of reform and his new approach to college counseling, those who witnessed his methods firsthand in Sacramento remain wary of his return to the profession and its implications for a new generation of students.

“It’s just sad that people would go back to him after knowing what he did,” Fels said. “If I could talk to the new students working with him, I would just tell them to find another counselor.”

Nellis also expressed similar concerns, as she finds it likely that he would be able to talk people into joining his agency. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he is able to bring back at least a small contingency. But I certainly would not recommend him,” Nellis said.

-Rehan Afzal, Anisha Mondal, Zema Nasirov