University and Colombia University school of journalism. Also we have jennifer levitz, she graduated from Layola University maryland, their review of unacceptable, the authors readable expose, capable examination of ambition, money and Higher Education. Phasepace account of the massive College Admissions scam, offers indepth look at the families who were willing to break the law and ignore Ethical Principles to provide Higher Education to their children. Well researched and detailed picture of crime emerging in American Culture corrupted by wealth and celebrity. My pleasure to have them here tonight to talk about the book with us, with that i will pass things off to emily. Terrific, we are thrilled to be here with you talking tonight about captivating book. Lets start with the scam. Melissa, why dont you start us off . How did what prosecutors call operation varsity blues work . Yes, it was a really complex scheme and thats one of the things thats amazing about it, how many parts there were to it and how many people needed to be involved for it to be successful so there was the testing part of it where rick singer paid off test administrators and had clients team lested for learning differences so they can get extended time on act or sat, once they got extend time they could register to take their test at these particular sites, proctor would go after student was done, fix the wrong answers and sometimes sit along side the student and kind of feed them the answers and in one case even take the test for a teen who was sitting home sick in another state. That was the testing part. The other part was athletic recruiting and undermining the system. Singer would pitch his clients, the teams as star athletes, soccer players, tennis players, he would gin up profile and speaking about accolades and championships and things like that, he would pay off the coach or buy the coach to have the team flag as a recruit and the kid would get into school because the athletes could get such a benefit in the admissions process. Wow, thats a scam, and jennifer, what drew singer to this, was he trying to get rich or was it Something Else . Yes. This guy just did not want to lose. If he picked up basketball he was throwing elbows or he coached Little League team, he would try to run up the score by 50 points. He ran a call center and just got everyone to get on the phone and turn the place around and there was something about him, one employee actually said, its almost like his mind was jolted like a gam her when he won, so it seemed that with the participants, you know, he took it as a personal challenge. He had participants that were as competitive as him come to him and it was a puzzle. The family was georgetown, kid doesnt quite cut it and taking it upon himself to do this. I dont think it was really about money. He did become really rich and we know he bought a big house and he had nice cars and things but all he he worked constantly and he just worked around the clock. He didnt really take vacations. He house didnt look like he lived in that much. He was invite today parties and he didnt go. Instead of night he used to go to municipal pools to get his name on leader board. Wow, thats competitive. And what drives the parent to do this . I think the culture and the community that the parents lived and what success was. So a lot of these parents really had quite a short list of what acceptable destination schools might be for their teens, not all of them, but it was Higher Education, idea that the schools are bust and without understanding the nuance and how how many other wondering how many wonderful colleges were out. They we wanted to meet their schools and wanted someone to help make it happen, help do it for them and sanger came recommended by advisers and name got passed around and seemed like a trusted source and some of them went to singer for elicit activity and others started on the legal side and led over the line as they got closer to college. Jennifer, how did the participants come to cross the line . It really varied. So some of some of the parents hired singer for Legal College counseling and that went on for a long time before they crossed the line and other parents really came to him almost immediately about his dart art and quickly down to business, and it start how he got them to cross the line, some of the parents argued that they were manipulated, mislead and confused and we do know that there were conversations where he would talk to parents and paint a grim picture of the kids chances an the parent sitting there kind of chock because they thought they would keep moving in the elite circles and hes saying, no, youre not getting in anywhere, youre not getting in schools and so they were convinced that they had to do something to make their child stand out. Thats what many of them kind of said and we also know that he was very emotionally intelligent and he was very good at sort of figuring out what the parent was worried about. On the other hand, as prosecution pointed out, this was criminal conspiracy, you need stringer to bribe coaches and you needed the parents to write the checks and do all sorts of other things, flying kids to test site in houston, West Hollywood and closing them on athletic procurement to making up cover stories for the school, to writing a big check and these crimes on played out over month. It wasnt just one day i went to a store and stole something. It was months chances for people to back out along the way so its very interesting, you know, the decisions that people made and we tried to really get at that and you can see people wrestling with this but at some point, at least the ones who pleaded guilty they got on board. Right. Amazing. And melissa, jennifer is talking, im thinking of a couple of things from your book that just really stuck out where you show parents sort of question it or question their judgment when Felicity Hoffman is driving her daughter. So hoffman was working with singer for her oldest daughter and with oldest daughter as jennifer described it got on board with the scheme and the day comes and she has to drive her daughter to test site to take the test and the daughter doesnt know that anything is a mess. Shes going to sake sat, but felicity knows that proctor will stick to answers and the daughter is nervous, youre taking sat, everyone is nervous. She says, maybe we can go get ice cream after and feliciti agrees and mind is clearly elsewhere, shes thinking turn around, turn around and she doesnt and she goes and drops daughter off and her daughter tests the take and they gets a wonderful score and huffman has spoken about how awful she felt in the moment and her head spinning, thinking, she just didnt stop and kept going. With her younger daughter, a year later and say, you know what, we are not going to do this, it doesnt feel right and she and look at the scheme for younger daughter just a week before prosecutors were, you know, bringing the case in and about 2 weeks before they were arrested. Wow. Jennifer tell us what the arrest moment for the family, how did that play out . It still amazes me of what happened and what i would do if this is me. So basically this had been in the works for weeks and had been kept very quiet and so the fbi r will give you an example for los angeles because that was the epicenter, the fbi there would have met in the dark very early in the morning in like a starbucks morning and 13 different teams and they went to the homes, big homes behind gates and long driveways and they banged on the door, fbi, they were armed and people were inside and they were almost all asleep. I know one mom was in pilates clothes and maybe they were up but they were startled and they went to the door and theres team of people of men, if they cooperated they were allowed to change things to sweats or jeans or something and they were brought them out and put them in government sedans and took them down downtown la to big Federal Building and they were really, this was a real exposure for them, this was criminals, there was nothing fair here. It was shackles, it was brought into this Holding Cells and and, you know, their photograph taken and fingerprints and they were put into big cells and they were put, the men were put in one and the women were put in another and they were given like bologna sandwiches or something and they were all sitting there and in the mens cell a curious thing started to happen which was a couple of people started to recognize one another. Well, okay, they even they really knew a couple of people and there was a doctor in there in scrubs an had moved in similar circles some of them and we know that like felicity and James Buckingham are friends, youre here too. And in the mens cell they are sitting there and some of them knew why they were there and some didnt and they didnt know what they had in common and one of the coaches spoke up and said, hey, do you guys rick singer, and the whole cell went quiet and everybody looked at one another and they are just like, oh, my god and thats when they realized what was going on. So the fbi didnt have to tell them when they showed up that morning . What they told them what they are being charged with, they are being charged with services fraud, people dont really know exactly what that means and so i think some of them probably knew what was remember some of these people years had gone by since they had done business. Thats an extraordinary scene and what should leaders think not what should, what do you think leaders will think of the parents after reading your book . What should we make of them . I think its arranged. I think one of the challenges in writing the book and digging into some of the families and getting to know some of them was that i personally as a parent could relate to some aspects of who these people are, not in their actions but in their approaches and intentions, perhaps, wanting to do what is right and doing whats best for the kid and having insecure for their parent and a person saying i can fix it all for you and want to go rely on the experts so much and it would be too easy to just outright hate the participants and said they did awful things and participants pleaded guilty to felony charges and they all got there for different reasons. You can relate a little bit to some of them. You feel a little bad, not too bad but you feel a little bad because clearly they got off track in parenting and angry because they didnt give kids space to figure things out and myopic view of success and they were overbearing than perhaps they should have been. They also just seemed so focused on many of them which is frustrating as somebody who covers and knows there are other schools that their teams would have been perfectly fine to stay at usc, georgetown or things like that, so i think each parent and each family story, they end up with rick singer for various reasons. Right, fascinating. And jennifer, what about the kids . Were any of them charged, what did they think about all of this . So the the u. S. Attorneys office in massachusetts when they announced the charges against the parents, they said that some of the kids knew and some of them didnt and it was a possibility that the kids could get charged. That was march 2019. None of the kids have been charged and i personally dont think any of them well. They said this back day, the parents were the primary drivers here, the kids most of them were in high school, it was very hard on the kids. We got the first interview with one of the kids, to talk about how he felt about it and it was pretty heartbreaking because he was a young man who was so talented already on his own, he was working so hard, he was, you know, taking ap classes, and been on essay train and practicing and he had a list of colleges that didnt include usc and range of schools, they were some state schools and smaller schools and interested in the environment, but he he felt the trade when this betrayed by his father and the first thing he said to his father, why didnt you believe in me. Heartbreaking. But also shifted a little a. He talked about it from anger to kind of feeling bad feeling sad for his dad for not quite getting it and, you know, upset at himself for not speaking up so there was that anger and that reaction and then, you know, when jennifer spoke to him months later he was a little bit more time he thought about it. He thought that he needed to do this and this was the path. I think he grew up a lot from the incident. He said that he realized he had realized that his parents a lot of parents in his community have been invested in kids lives and he had gone along and he was 20 now and he said he realized she wasnt going to do this anymore. That he was going to make his own decisions. In fact, when he made the decision to seek he didnt consult with any lawyers or the family representatives and i had to call get a few information about the case and the lawyers were like he did what, he spoke to you, later i found out that the father was thinking, i cant believe he did this and this is a huge mistake, but then when the story came out and his point of view was out there and he was so thoughtful and, you know, well spoken, they all said, we were wrong, he could handle himself and i think that he almost spoke out to prove a point. I can make a good decision, you can trust me. Thats fascinating. He proved wrong twice now. Where are the kids now . Its a range. A number of the universities kicked students out once they were caught in this. So georgetown and yale and stanford, rescinded admission offers and kicked out who was already there. Someone fromnorthwestern was asked to leave. The student didnt seem to know what was going on when the the kids didnt seem to know what was up and usc reviewed dozens of cases, cases of the kids whose parents were charged and also other kids that were connected to all of this even if parents didnt Face Criminal Charges and not everyone was kicked out of usc, the young man that jennifer and i had been talking about and he was there when we spoke to him in the winter and others just left voluntarily. Its been a range, but those who didnt stay at schools generally had to defend themselves and say, listen, i actually do belong here on my own. You know, amidst all of this, how hard is it to get into college . Did they really i know they felt like they needed to do this, but did they . It depends on what school they wanted to go to. The vast majority of students go to college that is admit the best majority of applicants. No, it is not hard to get into college and it is getting harder to get to certain schools and it has gotten a lot harder as volume has risen, people see that, they get nervous, they get to apply to more schools, its a vicious cycle and when youre looking at schools that have 5 to 10 , ivy, stanford, highest schools that are in low teens now, usc is in there, it seems really daunting, so you can kind of understand why some parents, some families think that they need to whether thats essay coach or, you know, paying to have volunteer, put on on resumd parents took it to another level and theres anxiety of parents of High School Students when they see those low admin rates and hear someone with 4. 4,. 0 gpa and didnt get anywhere. What about the high schools . Any reform happening there . Well, yes. The high schools were interesting in this book because they were on one hand a lot of these schools seemed to almost perpetuate this anxiety by promoting how many kids we got into the schools and had maps on the website and clearly they were interested in that and whether they said that and told everybody doesnt matter where you go, people absorbed the different message but there was always this tension between the guidance counselor at the school and the private counselor that the parents would hire and that came up a number of times where you had a guidance counselor at the school say, you know, look, talk to a college and say, kind of raise red flags, it seems that, you know, johnny is applying to school and if hes on a track team and i know he is not and there was tension and i know what they have seen is some of the schools have just said to parents, if you work with a private counselor, you know, you cant work with us. You have to pick. We are not going to be party to something that youre doing that may be sketchy. I think to answer that a little bit, some of the private schools in particular, you know, the families are paying all of this tuition to go to high school and the counselor and the principal say this is what we do, let us do it, let us do our work, we will help support your kid as they are applying to college but some families, they dont like what they are hearing. They dont like somebody says thats too much of a reach school, perhaps, theres 7 other kids from this class applying there and your odds arent that great and maybe consider other schools and they will go and find somebody to tell them what they want to hear. Right. Such a tough bind to be at. Melissa, what surprised you on the story the most . Oh, my goodness. Im cynical by nature, so i dont know that i was surprised that there were people finding very creative ways to get an edge here. I think part of what surprised me was the proctor, the parent, singer had, you know, fulltime staff, assistants and all of that to make this work. I think that surprise med is how many close calls there were, times where they almost got caught and the whole scheme came crushing down but it didnt and it was surprising to learn about why they didnt and as they write in the book a mix of inertia and closeloop information and there was questions, the person who got put in charge of getting to the bottom of this and figuring it out was something that was working with rick singer. Theres always an explanation on why the person was on the Baseball Team or whatever it was. So, you know, youre learning of all of these things, oh, my gosh, they were so close and the fact that, you know, ultimately when this whole scheme got taken down it had nothing to do with singer essentially that led to the takedown. Tell us more about what led to the takedown . Jennifer, you want to do that one . Yes. It was just a strange unrelated case of the securitys and Exchange Commission got a tip from investor who lives in the area that theyve been ripped off and so they start looking stock fraud and led them to a businessman in los angeles, so they go to his house and they get their documents and anyway he comes back to boston to to try to make a deal with prosecutors and perhaps be a witness and help them expose the larger scheme in return for leniency and when that happens the prosecutors will really have to dig into a persons past because if they are going to use them as reliable witness, they dont want anything to surprise them when they go to court, they dont want the defense to say something, so they have to know that a person has done and they are looking at financial records and they see money moving between him and connecticut and he just came out and said, you know, the coach at yale solicited me for a bribe to get my daughter to school and ive been paying him money, so you can imagine this room in boston where the prosecutors thought they had a fairly regular fraud case, ding, ding, ding, and they started to talk to him more and he told them, lets hear more about that and then one got out and he said i think we might have Something Interesting here and this guy did not know rick singer but what they did if they used him to bring in the yale coach, so they set the yale coach up in boston, got him on tape and during the course of watching that interaction, he said something about rick, rick singer, they thought, i wonder who rick singer is so they flipped the yale coach and they go to they they get rick singer, they have him on the phone and catch him, listen to his calls for a while, bring rick singer in september of 2018 and confront him that a hotel in boston and you can kind of figure out the rest. Rick stinger flipped and turns over his rolodex and there you have operation varsity blues. The chain of rocks there. Amazing. It really is. I remember talking one time with one of the lawyers and i said, i finally understand now in mob movie if you did a crime with somebody, you really had to kill that other person because they were going to flip on you, so they have to disappear, and thats [laughter] this is not how the investigation usually works. Usually you get somebody low down and here you could have quickly got the master mind, you got rick singer and he gives up all of these other people, all of the parents which was a very unusual way of going about this criminal investigation. Yes. The u. S. Attorney in massachusetts was very worried originally about flipping rick singer because its very risky to have your main witness cooperate or be its a crook, right, so you cant really, can you trust this person and can we believe what hes saying and so sure enough when they first flip him he goes off the rails a little bit. Just the first few days, they give him like thats in california. Go back and do your thing and they were going to get more parents and listen in. He tips the parents off on wearing a wire, you havent done anything yet, so he takes that chance. I think he later said he felt he felt bad for some of the families. I think he just he, you know, maybe he didnt want to lose, that was part of it too. He ends up, you know, they find out pretty fast and they the u. S. Attorney in boston was like get him back here now, like we cannot have him out there rooming around, like we need to baby sit this guy, so they bring him back to boston and they just set him up at conference table overlooking Boston Harbor and hes in there making his calls, agents next to him and doing his thing in track suit, they describe him sort of walking around, people even walked with him if he had to go through the bathroom, they walked with him. He was on a short leash after that, but then he became probably because hes so competitive, at some point he just decided if im going to be a witness, im going to be the best witness i have ever seen. He turned over, from what i understand like 150 names, so, you know, thats why weve seen 55 people arrested but they probably could have gone further but i guess at some point you to decide, you know, we have enough here. Go back, 150 this is what i heard. Right. You know, well over 100 names, he was going to be the best witness and so there had to be more parents but from the prosecutors point of view you had to build a case, a lot of information and they didnt have it on a lot of these people but he did give them a lot of names and we know, you know, after this as you remember there was the day and then what seemed trickle cases along the way and we are still wondering sometimes who else is out there, you know, and some parents like we know, for instance, that there were quite a few parents that got lawyers because they were anticipating, somebody is going to come knocking. One dad came forward. I dont think he could take it. You got me. [laughter] came to the cops and said, hey, im involved in this. Right, right. Presumably 70 something parents out there wondering if one predawn they knock on the door, right . Yes. I saw one question. How should we do it . I do have questions from the chat unless emily do you have any other questions . I can always come back. A couple good questions from the chat, one was sent to me, what was the difference between writing a fulllength book about a story like this and writing an article . So this is something jennifer and i talked a lot as newspaper reporters, the longers stories i normally write are at most about 2,000 words and this is close to 100,000 words, so very daunting, our agent actually helped us frame it from the very beginning before we knew how to do any of that and what was it going to look like and each each chapter at a time and we would each work on individual chapter or different part of a chapter and we each kind of took ownership of certain families or certain characters in the book and going on them and edit each other. We wrote the whole book in google docs. It was quite daunting at the outset and then at the very end, kind of intimidating but each chapter was like a couple of those really long stories and a little terrifying. I just started thinking, break it down, one chapter, not writing an entire book, today im writing this. And i will say, it wasnt just scary, it was also liberating in some way and i say that with emily that was our editor at the journal, but you have an opportunity to write dialogue, to write color, to create scenes and none of this stuff is made up but we are really able to paint a full picture that you cant when youre limited to a few words and it was a really interesting and fun opportunity to stretch these very different knuckles. Another question, would you please give us your best tips for interviewing witnesses and sources . Wow, i think i think acknowledging to people that that i know this is really hard and that that youre probably scared to talk and that if you even feel like why should i talk, but just we, i can say this because it was true, but we really want to hear your side of the story, you know, youre going to be in the book because youre in the files, everything is written about glow the court. We know everything from the document but help us fill in you, help us like humanize you and present you, you know, present the full story and i think once, you know, once we kind of did that, we did get some people to to open up. It was it was hard. I mean, there was a number of awkward, you know, kind of like lunches or something where somebody would come and and order and just not eat and sit there and that kind of thing, you know, but yeah, sometimes its a matter of sitting there and letting the person tell their story and you would give prompt and they would open up more and more and going back to them a few weeks later and they would have more to share. You know, their memory would have been by the fresh conversation and they want to tell a little bit more and i came across the email and here is what happened. You cant essentially you cant hide from this. Like, you are going to be part of the story. We are still going find ways to get all of this information about you. When there were people who didnt want to talk themselves, they were saying this person can tell my best story on my behalf or if they werent offering up those people we would find them ourselves and say we know more about you now, are you ready to share your side, not in a threatening way but as jennifer said we want to know your full story. Right. Another question from the chat, how much of the parents decisions do you think was driven by a sense that everyone does this . Did you feel like that feeling was pervasive among people that you investigated . I think this is Cocktail Party conversation for parents, you know, in certain social circles so, i think, yeah there was so much discussion about who is your sat recruiter and who is your coach, private soccer coach. People lived in a world where this was normal. The bear minimum you were going to do was get test tutor and you were being somehow remiss in your parenting duties if you didnt do at least that. Some wanted to game the system and everyone knew something that donated a building at some school or double legacy or things like that, so there was the sense that if you werent doing something, your kid was going to be missing out. Now they didnt all say everyone else was doing exactly this or something to this extent, but they did kind of assume that other people were finding end goal and edges and having friends who are on the board somewhere and write letter of recommendation and and to add to that, there was funny i dont mean funny but interesting dialogue in some of the taped conversations where parents were trying to get out of rick singer if someone else was doing it, like it would make them feel better. So and so is doing it. Im not going to get into his business because i think they we wanted to know im not the only one doing this. Does it seem likely to you that if rick singer was operating like this on the west coast, that there are not similar operations in other wealthy communities in other geographyies . We discuss other pieces of people who found weaknesses and ways of manipulating the system, so in long island, theres a case not that long ago of somebody who was taking sats for other teens and he went to college and he would fly homes on the weekend. His name was sam, so, yes, there are other people doing improper things to gain an edge to game the system. They have the effort to encourage families give up a guardianship of their children so that the kids could apply for Financial Aid and get scholarships. We think the wall street journal both reported on that in the past year. There are crazy games happening all over the place. As schools move away from requiring sat and act theyre going to use some of their criteria if they figure out what the next data point is. Could you talk a little bit more about the private College Counseling industry. Are they being sold a false set of goods. It has been a fast growing industry. And the former College Admissions officer. They must know what theyre doing. You can joint certain organizations. There really isnt any tasting of the industry. We heard families and kids who were there. And there is an assumption they only work with super wealthy families. And then there are private counselors who do pro bono work with students they need Additional Support and guidance. Someone from outside would be able to help. It really varies. Thank you all for your excellent reporting. The celebrity status they were playing a role. I dont know the celebrity status played a role. There were a number of parents who were wealthy that you never heard of. They were wealthy people. You kind of have to be to work with them. I think one of the main things. They have a pic cases that they have some evidence. They wanted to get people on pace. They were really looking for concrete evidence to try to build the case. Thats why they went to the links they did with parents he have already done deals with earlier. My charity is getting remember how i got your son into school as a tennis player. What they have done on the phone. When youre doing these sting operations no one likes to get audited. They would hash it out thats why they have him do that. I think those are the cases they went after. There was a number of cases they chose not to pursue. They have some other big names that they have heard of. I think it was more about the edited. Those few parents. They became the space of it. They were so wellknown. Well known. There was some bigot names. For the actresses. For one last question that you touched on earlier. Can in is this still happening . Can it happen again . We does have to depend on the intrepid reporters like yourself who will cover it. Is it still happening. Are you on the case now. After it broke in the spring of 2019. They came out and said we can start to audit applications a little bit more. Working to try to verify some of the military materials are accurate. We are can i make sure that they had been recruited to perfect team. They better had a good explanation. They cant do that for every application. The application volume is so high that you are getting a few minutes five or ten minutes to look at an application you are not able to go and call that ultra. Or call the high school and make sure that someone is actually the president and that the vice president. They would take advantage of that trust. Then there are games people are playing. One more question from katie. Ladies, what impact do you believe that this has on Higher Education. I will let melissa answer that one. My answer mightve been different a few months ago. Weve seen so many really extra essential questions on how do they perceive given everything going on its really hard for a school right now to say that their neck in a Pay Attention to who is a full pain student or who can dangle a hundred thousand dollars. You have to think about the institutional needs. Where their longterm viability. It is hard to say that this scandal well have a huge impact on Higher Education with moments of introspection. I think there was a little bit of that. A lot of high schools certainly pushing certain schools for certain students. You still have plenty of College Nights creeping earlier and earlier. We continue to get reader emails talking about their own kids. A disadvantage these days. That craziness and anxiety of all of it. I dont know if it fundamentally changes Higher Education. A little bit more closely. Beyond that i think the jury is still out. Thank you melissa. The book is unacceptable. There is a link to buy it from us in the chat. I hope you will consider getting it from us. Thank you very much and thank you to everyone who watched. Here she talks about the relationship between the president and the first lady. He admires her she is cool. When she gets angry she doesnt scream or do something impulsive she just walks away. She admires what he is able to do. His connection to people. Theyre both really does respected with most people. Wealthy things. Theyre both a lot like the same things. There are a lot more in common than people think. They are really tight unit and for her its her mother and family mother and father. I think the relationship clearly has hit rocks at different times. I have a lot in the book about this. She was furious after embarrassed to no end. Someone who has known her for the long time. Did she get more to find more episodes of afterwards visit our website click on the afterwards tab near the top of the page [music] welcome to pro books. 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