William “Rick” Singer, the kingpin running the massive college admissions scandal, was officially sentenced to a period of 42 months in prison this past Wednesday morning.
Additionally, Singer will also be required to pay a fine of $19 million and then be placed on a three-year supervised release to go along with the time he will spend in prison. The money will be handed over as restitution to the Internal Revenue Service, as well as forfeiture.
“I lost my ethical values and have so much regret. To be frank, I’m ashamed of myself,” Singer explained in court.
Singer was the key operator in what many investigation teams have dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues,” in which he sold slots for students to get into high-ranking schools. This scandal entangled a number of celebrities such as Lori Loughlin, who also served a two-month stint in prison in the wake of taking measures to ensure her children got into the University of Southern California. There was a grand total of 50 defendants in the Varsity Blues scam, and roughly two-thirds of them were issued sentences of on average three months.
A notable piece of the scam was carried out by paying to have coaches bring in certain students to play on their sports teams, despite the students not being skilled at the sport, or in come cases not having played it at all. Singer also assisted in getting students into schools by having someone alter the wrong answers on their college admissions exams or by paying off a proctor to give them the correct answers to the questions. He was able to do so by informing the parents that they needed to get the students examined for learning differences as a means to secure more time to take the tests. Parents also paid for the scam by submitting payments to a falsified charity, which allowed them to also claim tax write-offs for the payments.
The prosecution team wanted to force Singer to be sentenced to a six-year stint in prison, while the defense sought a much shorter length of prison time.
“Without this defendant, without Rick Singer coming up with a scheme, masterminding the scheme, orchestrating the scheme it never would have happened,” explained the prosecution team.
“Staggering in scope, Singer’s scheme was also breathtaking in its audacity and the levels of deception it involved,” the prosecution team reportedly explained via a court filing prior to sentencing. They stated that his work to assist in the investigation “was exceptionally valuable and, at the same time, plagued by missteps.”
Singer elected to work with police officials in order to make sure charges were brought up against a number of people who reached out to him for his services.