Man at the center of college scandal has S.A. ties
Decades before he became ensnared in what authorities described as the largest college admissions scandal ever uncovered in the U.S., the man at the center of the alleged conspiracy got his start in academics and coaching in San Antonio.
William “Rick” Singer, who federal investigators say helped Hollywood celebrities, CEOs and other wealthy parents bribe their children’s way into competitive colleges, was a studentathlete at Trinity University and Our Lady of the Lake University in the mid-1980s.
After graduating from Trinity, he coached basketball at MacArthur High School.
Singer, 58, is accused of using a charity he established to launder money from parents. The funds allegedly were used to bribe college officials, help students cheat on standardized tests and pay off coaches to get his clients’ children into colleges.
Singer’s indictment stemmed from a U.S. Justice Department investigation that resulted in the indictment of 50 people, including actresses Lori Loughlin of “Full House” and Felicity Huffman of “Desperate Housewives” fame, a promi-
nent lawyer, a private-equity executive, athletic coaches and college exam administrators.
Court documents detailed how parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy their children’s admission into such schools as Stanford, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Southern California and Wake Forest.
Federal investigators say Singer was the mastermind behind the scheme.
Singer graduated from Trinity in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education and English, a university spokeswoman said. He had transferred to Trinity after earning credits at Our Lady of the Lake and Brookhaven College in Dallas.
Trinity’s student newspaper, The Trinitonian, profiled Singer in a 1985 story with the headline, “Multitalented Singer rises to challenge.” An accompanying photo shows him running across a basketball court wearing a Tigers jersey with the number 25.
Singer, then a junior, was portrayed as a go-getter who excelled at not one but two sports: basketball and baseball. The story recounted his success on the basketball court and how he juggled games with training for the baseball team.
Singer described himself as someone who “didn’t like to lose.”
Even if other players had more talent, he had more heart, he said.
Singer told the student paper he wanted to go into coaching after graduation, even though it “doesn’t really pay very well.”
“I’d like to coach, and I’m really interested in youth,” Singer said. “I feel that I had a tremendous amount of coaching in my playing days. I’ve seen the good parts and the bad parts. I think I could do a credible job with kids.”
Singer went on to coach basketball at MacArthur. He had been assistant basketball coach for about a year when Lee Stubbs was hired to coach the team in 1987.
That’s when Singer’s coaching career in San Antonio came to an end.
“When I got the job, the principal asked me basically what I would do with Singer,” said Stubbs, now 69 and retired. “And told him I didn’t really think our philosophies would mesh or our personalities would mesh.”
“I’m going to be honest with you: I didn’t like the guy,” said Stubbs, who coached at the school for some 20 years. “There was something about him. He was arrogant and opinionated, and I’d heard he’d had a run in with several of the players that I’d been coaching.”
Singer left San Antonio and found work as a basketball coach in California — at Encina Preparatory High School in Sacramento. He didn’t last long.
He was fired in 1988 after parents complained he’d been abusive toward referees, the Sacramento Bee reported.
In the years that followed, Singer started a counseling business aimed at getting high school students into college.
The Justice Department investigation targeted a business that Singer founded in 2007 called the Edge College & Career Network, also known as The Key, based in Newport Beach, Calif.
In 2012, he created the Key Worldwide Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the business that he used to disguise his financial dealings as charitable donations, according to the indictment.
Between 2011 and February 2019, parents paid Singer $25 million to bribe coaches and university officials to bring on clients’ children as recruited athletes, a scheme that involved creating fake profiles and doctoring photographs of real athletes with the faces of Singer’s clients’ children, according to court documents.
On one occasion, Singer accepted $1.2 million to help an applicant get into Yale as a recruit for the women’s soccer team — even though she didn’t play competitive soccer.
In other instances, clients paid him $15,000 to $75,000 to ensure their children took the SAT or ACT at testing locations where their answers would be corrected or someone else would take the tests for them, court documents state.
Three Texas residents have been indicted and arrested for in the scandal.
Houston resident Lisa “Niki” Williams is accused of facilitating cheating on ACT and SAT exams in exchange for bribes.
Martin Fox, also of Houston, was accused of arranging the payment of bribes to Williams and the longtime men’s tennis coach at UTAustin, Michael Center.
Center also was indicted, and UT placed him on administrative leave. His lawyer, Dan Cogdell, said Center would plead not guilty.