Netflix's documentary

Once the family approved his application, she said, “we saw Netflix and whatnot and we were like, `Oh my God.'”

The Netflix movie “Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal” is a docudrama starring actor Matthew Modine as Singer and uses transcripts from Singer's wiretapped conversations with parents and coaches for the script.

“My families want a guarantee,” Modine tells one parent as he explains the scheme.

He offered them a “side door” to admission to Yale, Georgetown, UCLA, USC and other schools. Parents paid upward of $75,000 to Singer's “charity” to arrange a proctor to cheat on college entrance exams, then hundreds of thousands more for Singer to pay off crooked coaches to “recruit” the unqualified students to teams they never had to play for. To make their applications look legitimate, Loughlin's daughters were photographed on rowing machines, even though they had never participated in crew.

Crunched for time to submit an application to USC for Napa vintner Agustin Huneeus' daughter, Singer submitted a photo of someone else playing water polo. Another father, Massachusetts private equity investor John B. Wilson, invited Singer to join him for a birthday party in Paris where he was renting in Versailles.

Throughout the documentary and in court records, Singer comes across as a smooth-talking manipulator, preying on the desperation and vanities of wealthy parents, and raking in $25 million for himself and his co-conspirators along the way.

For the last year and a half at Isle of Palms, he's been convincing some of his neighbors, anyway, that he's good at heart.

Shortly after he moved in and remodeled his kitchen, Singer donated his old refrigerator and microwave to the food pantry at Lighthouse Church across the street. He's helped neighbors move furniture. He pets their dogs.

“I'm under the impression he's retired,” said Bill Blankenship who lives in the bright blue trailer next door to Singer, “and wants to do good.”

Every morning, Blankenship said, Singer pulls out of his driveway and heads to the beaches around St. Petersburg, looking for people who might want to borrow the paddleboards and kayaks that he keeps strapped to the white Mercedes-Benz van. Sometimes Singer finds recreational fishermen along the shores and takes them on kayaks to deeper waters where the