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Full Measure After Hours
After Hours: Wrongly Prosecuted by DOJ in the College Admissions Scandal
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Hi everybody, Cheryl Atkinson here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure. After Hours today, a fascinating story of a parent wrongly prosecuted by DOJ in the college admissions scandal. What a twisted tale you're going to hear about today. It has to do with a little told story of the 2019 college admissions scandal, also known as Operation Varsity Blues. You may recall the FBI accused dozens of parents, college employees and their go betweens in a bribery scheme where the parents were trying to get their students admitted to top colleges. What you probably haven't heard about is one component that sounds maddeningly familiar to me. After years of covering all kinds of stories and scandals, the Department of Justice wrongly accused a parent and tried to bully him into pleading guilty to things he didn't do and then kept piling on more and more charges to punish him when he didn't agree to plead guilty. Most people can't fight that kind of pressure. First, they don't have the money. It can cost millions of dollars in legal fees and other expenses. Second, with all the wild overcharging, there's a possibility the accused, even when innocent, will end up with serious prison time for things they might get no prison time for if they'd only agree to plead guilty. Well, this parent, John Wilson, wouldn't do it. So he ended up with the most charges being filed against him. He was convicted in a trial that he calls wildly unfair, but he ultimately won on appeal. By the way, as you'll hear, he he's the former president of Staples International and until the day he was arrested by the FBI and put in a prison cell with hardened criminals with no details on what he'd supposedly done wrong, he'd never been arrested for anything in his life. And when he talks about Rick Singer, as you're about to hear, Rick Singer is the man who is convicted of being the go between for parents soliciting bribes to get their kids into colleges they didn't qualify to be in. So here's the story with John Wilson.
- [02:51]
A
I guess it starts with what was done to me by the government. Or maybe what the government did to me is something that should never happen to anyone in America. And I don't say that lightly. I've managed businesses in six continents. I've traveled to 95 countries, and I've seen more than my fair share of corruption and unfairness. And what the prosecutors did to me once they put me in their crosshairs was so outrageous that if I didn't experience it firsthand, I wouldn't believe it in a million years.
- [03:20]
C
Did you ever find out what put you in their crosshairs? How your case came before the Department of Justice?
- [03:28]
A
Yes. I met with a dozen different law firms up front. Each one of them said, you've done nothing wrong, and the indictment documents. And each of them said, the only reason they went after you was to create venue in Boston.
- [03:39]
C
But how did they find out about you? How did they find out that you even had a case? That they had a case?
- [03:45]
A
I was the only Singer client based in Massachusetts. All of Singer's clients were outside of Massachusetts. 95% were in California. A few were sprinkled in different locations. So they knew they had a very high profile case, which would bring a lot of media attention because there were movie stars and other famous people. So the Boston prosecutors who uncovered this case wanted to get venue to bring the media spotlights that could boost their careers to Boston. And so they looked for some venue hook. I was a client of singers from years before in California, and I had reconnected with them from my daughters who are now juniors in high school when I moved back to the US and lived in Massachusetts. So those phone calls are what triggered their thinking. Here's the perfect venue hook for us to bring this case and all of the media spotlights and all the other defendants to Massachusetts for trial.
- [04:32]
C
When you say you are a client of singers, what did that entail?
- [04:37]
A
He provided services. So basically he was recommended by Goldman Sachs to me 10 years ago, in 2010, and he provided legitimate services. They told me at the time he had everybody who was anyone in Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs was a client. Professional athletes like Joe Montana was a client. He had 1700 clients, and that's been verified by the government records. And he did legitimate services. So he worked long consistently through financial institutions. So he worked with Goldman Sachs, he worked with Morgan Stanley, I think, other people. And so he got references from them, warm references from them, or recommendations. So the person who worked for me from Goldman Sachs, giving me financial advice and tax advice, introduced Singer to me and he said, this is a guy who's running the biggest consulting business in the US for colleges. He's doing all of our major clients and you ought to work with him. So I hired him.
- [05:26]
C
I didn't even know that industry existed. So there are people you can hire to help your kid get in a good college?
- [05:33]
A
Yes. I didn't know it existed either until the Goldman Sachs person called me up. And so he started doing just normal things. He was helping my kid. He hired tutors. He had a bunch of tutors that worked in his organization. So he was helping my son first with tutoring. So he was doing tutoring, test prep, tutoring for the ACTs and the SATs. He started with that. Then we also did legitimate charity work. So I was driving my son on weekends from San Francisco, Sacramento to help inner city kids, teach them how to read and write and do math.
- [06:02]
C
That's stuff that looks good on the college application. Right.
- [06:05]
A
So he's doing charity work. He did real charity work and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of colleges and high schools. So whenever you asked Singer a question, he knew everything about every school, every high school, every college. So he was very knowledgeable. He was doing real charity work and he was doing real tutoring work. So I trusted him. Over a period of years, he would come to our house probably once or twice a month and built up a good relationship with my son. And so we grew to trust him and trust his advice.
- [06:30]
C
And your goal was ultimately what?
- [06:33]
A
To find the right fit for my son, for school. To get him as prepared as he could for his tests, to help build his profile, to be as strong as it could and to get a school that would be a good fit for him. I didn't care which school it was. I wanted to be a good fit.
- [06:44]
C
And how did that turn out? What school did your son go to?
- [06:47]
A
He ended up going to usc. My son was a star athlete from a very early age. When he was six years old, he was winning swim competitions. At nine, he had a world record. The youngest person ever to swim from Alcatraz. That got him on the Oprah Show. He got a letter from the President of the United States. So he was an extraordinary athlete his entire life. And he began swimming year round from, as I said, the age of 6. By the age of 12 he got into water polo and he was playing for national championship teams in water polo, his high school team and his club teams. So he loved water polo and USC had a top water polo program, one of the top one to five and every year. And his high school coach was a world renowned high school coach. He was himself a two time MVP at the NCAA level for water polo he was a water polo alternate goalie for the Olympic team and he ran one of the top 10 or 20 teams in the country. And he recommended my son to usc. And so I thought it was all very appropriate, very legitimate. He liked the school. What I did for each of my children, I made sure they were qualified for the schools, too. On the home rights. The last thing I wanted to do is have him go to school he wasn't qualified for and have him go there and perform poorly. So each one of my children, I made sure that their ACT test scores were in the middle quartiles to top quartiles of the peer group going to that school. So I always made sure that they would be successful academically. I never tried to push them to a school they weren't qualified for. I wanted them to succeed.
- [08:07]
C
So how long did he go to school there before. And we'll talk about that next. Before you fly in from your out of country visit and this mess happens to you. How long had he been going there for?
- [08:18]
A
Three or four years. Then. Yeah.
- [08:19]
C
Successfully?
- [08:20]
A
Yes. He graduated with his degree of a 3.0 in economics from USC, so. And he was on the team? He played. I went to many practices and games at usc.
- [08:29]
C
Water polo.
- [08:30]
A
Water polo, yeah.
- [08:31]
C
So tell us the date that it happened where you understood all this was turning upside down. What happened to you?
- [08:38]
A
Yeah, it was crazy. I was flying in from a business trip in Europe to a client meeting in Houston, Texas. And I'll never Forget it. In 2019. This is March. March 12, or March 11, actually, 2019. I got off the plane, I'm going through the normal customs and immigration security checks. They pull me aside, said there's something wrong with my passport. I go into a back room and then two FBI agents push me against the wall, handcuff me, shackle me, and tell me I'm under arrest. I was shocked. I had no warning. This came out of the blue like a lightning bolt.
- [09:10]
C
You ever been arrested before?
- [09:11]
A
No, I'd never been arrested in my life. I'd never even been accused of a crime in my life. I'd never been in a courthouse in my entire life.
- [09:18]
C
What did they tell you was wrong?
- [09:19]
A
They told me I was under arrest. I said, you must have the wrong John Wilson. I said, There's 15,000 John Wilsons. I didn't do anything wrong. They asked me my address. I told him, you know, Massachusetts. I said, you're the right guy. And I said, what did you arrest me for? They said, honest services fraud. I'll never Forget that. And I said, well, what is that? And the two FBI agents arrested me. They both shrugged their shoulders, that we don't know.
- [09:39]
C
And you had no idea this was related to college or anything at the time?
- [09:42]
A
I had no idea what it was at all. Neither did they. They couldn't tell me what it was related to. They said, it's an unusual fraud charge we've never heard of and that's all we know.
- [09:50]
C
And what did they do with you from there?
- [09:52]
A
So then they processed me and within an hour I was brought to this federal prison where they then stripped me down. They handed me off to these guards. They stripped me down, put me in this big, I don't know, common area shower room. And the guards took a couple of big hoses and started hosing me down like an animal in this large public shower and still thinking to myself, what did I do? How could this be happening? This can't be real. Then I dried off. They put me in a prison jumpsuit. And before I was going through the guard booth and looking at the prison, it was like you see in the movies, it was a two story cell block with probably 30 or 40 cells on the two stories and about 60 or 80 guys in the common area. And the guard says to me, you better watch your back in here. You're the only old white guy, he says, and they're going to assume you're a pedophile and they hate pedophiles here. And one of them is likely to try to shiv you and stab you. I was in shock. I said, what? How can that be? I asked, can you lock me in my cell so I don't get stabbed? He says, no, no. If they lock you in your cell, they're going to think you're a pussy and they're really going to fuck you up. That's what he said. I pardon my French. That's what he said to me. I said, oh my God. And she said, just watch your back in here because they're going to think you're a pedophile.
- [11:04]
C
What prison was this in Houston?
- [11:06]
A
I don't know, the Federal Detention center in Houston. So it was crazy.
- [11:10]
C
So, and I know there's some more steps and they put you back in prison until the end of that next day. And they require this one of this high cash bond and all this crazy stuff. But when was it you first understood what you were really being accused of?
- [11:23]
A
It wasn't until the next morning. So I spent the entire day and the entire night still not knowing what I was arrested for. And I remember thinking, when they locked me into my prison cell with one other inmate, I said, thank God. I was never happy to be locked in a prison cell, because I knew I could take the guy in my cell, but I couldn't take on 60 or 80 guys in the common area who could stab me in my back. So I thought, this is a relief. I'm in my cell with one guy. So the next morning, I had done my call, and my brother, he was a lawyer, a civil lawyer from Tennessee, he met me the next morning. And I remember being handcuffed and shackled, My feet and my hands shuffling down the hallway to this interview room where my brother was behind a plexiglass wall with another lawyer. I said, what is this? What's going on? And they said, something to do with Singer. I said, singer? He said, yeah, you bribed coaches and you did some fraud. I said, what? I didn't do that again. I said, they must have the wrong John Wilson.
- [12:13]
C
Where'd he get his information from?
- [12:14]
A
He read the indictment. He and the lawyer that he brought from Texas, the local Houston lawyer, had read the indictment. It was like a 300 page indictment covering the 50 people that were charged. And in my section it said, honest services fraud, and that somehow I was bribing coaches and committing fraud at college through Singer. I said, I didn't do any of that.
- [12:38]
C
So as you started to learn what it was you were charged with, and you felt to yourself, well, I can mount a defense that shows I didn't do this. How did things progress?
- [12:49]
A
Yeah, it was probably the best of times, the worst of times. We came back to Boston, and immediately there were 50 different defendants searching for Boston law firms to help navigate this process. So we did something, I'll call, for lack of a better term, speed dating for lawyers. We were literally interviewing about 10 different law firms to see who was the right fit. And we were sharing our facts, and all the other defendants were sharing their facts as well. So all these law firms were reading up on all these defendants, and every single one to a T said, your facts are completely different than the other defendants. We don't see anything in the indictment that says you committed any crime. And they said this to me again and again and again. And so I was convinced, yeah, I didn't commit any crime, but they were smearing me through guilt by association. And because I was the Massachusetts defendant they needed, they really had to have someone in Massachusetts to justify bringing all the defendants from California to trial there. They charged me anyway, and Just merged me in and smeared me through that guilt by association.
- [13:42]
C
Why do you think they wouldn't want to hold the trials of the Hollywood notables out there in California?
- [13:48]
A
Because the prosecutors were based in Boston. If the trial was moved to California, they wouldn't get it. They wouldn't get the career enhancing spotlights. So if it went to their colleagues in California, they would lose this media opportunity. And for a prosecutor, getting a high profile case like this can make your career. It can lead to a seven figure job at a private. And it did actually in this case.
- [14:08]
C
Who do you think, if you even know, brought up this whole case against Rick Singer or had him even interviewed about this? How did this even come to somebody's attention?
- [14:18]
A
What I read in the media, it came about through a third party who was arrested for some other fraud in Connecticut. And then the Boston prosecutors found this guy and he had committed some other type of securities fraud. And he talked about some coach at Yale that was taking bribes to get kids on. And he tried to say, look, can I exchange that information? A lesser sentence in his own fraud. So that was the thread that they began to pull on that then led them to Singer and then all these parents in California. So it was an unrelated fraud charge for an unrelated party that knew about this set of cheating and bribery activities that a separate coach was doing that was also working with Rick Singer.
- [14:56]
C
How long did this go on before you were convicted and what were you convicted of?
- [15:01]
A
It went on for about three years. Until the trial happened. Yeah. And then they charged with nine felonies in the end, all to pressure. So the process was shocking in many ways. May step back a little bit right up front. They charged just one charge on a service as fraud. Then they proceeded to literally every three months add on more charges. And each time they did, they said, we want you to plead guilty. If you don't, we're going to add on more charges. And they did that again and again. Four additional times. They ended up charging me with nine felonies and 180 years of prison time, all for the same act. And they said, we'll go for more. And I said, I'm not going to plead guilty no matter how many charges you put on me. I didn't do anything wrong. So that's how this process started. They literally added on charges and charges and charges to pressure me to plead guilty. I had more charges than Sam Bankman fried. I had more charges than Rick Singer. I had five times the charges of all the other parents because they knew I was the one who was innocent. And if I went to trial, that would be exposed. So they did everything in their power to get me to plead guilty. And 98% of people do plead guilty.
- [16:03]
C
But the jury convicted you?
- [16:04]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Then what? They did two other things. They ran an unfair trial. That was just outrageous. In fact, it was so unfair that 11 former US attorneys who were unpaid by me went to the extraordinary step of writing an amicus brief saying that John Wilson did not receive a fair trial. They criticized their own colleagues in public. That never happens at a criminal trial. That's how outrageous my trial was. They went out.
- [16:30]
C
What was one example of something unfair you think they did at trial?
- [16:34]
A
There were hundreds. The first thing they did up front was they judge shopped. I didn't even know this was possible. So right up front, they sprinkled in some lower level cases as part of this giant conspiracy. A bunch of test proctors around the country and things. And they got random judges assigned to each of those cases. Then once they got the judge they wanted, they sprinkled around five or six cases. They then amended that judge's docket and put all the parents on that judge. And that judge is a nice man, but he's in his mid-80s, he's very pro government, and they picked him for a reason and they misled him. And so every time they made a motion, he approved it. During my trial, he approved their motions 98.3% of the time. And they blocked my evidence 660 times. Think about that. So I'll give you a couple examples of things. They blocked my daughter's perfect ACT score. And near perfect scores were inadmissible.
- [17:23]
C
In other words, that would have shown that they deserved to get in college, not that they were given a favor.
- [17:29]
A
Right. They earned their admissions. They were qualified on their own merits for admission, even at Harvard and Stanford.
- [17:34]
C
What was the reason that was barred from being told to the jury?
- [17:38]
A
They either said it was hearsay or not an official business record. Whatever reason they gave, the judges rubber stamped it. He literally approved them 98.3% of the time. My son's certified swim times and his world record. The certified swim times proved he's one of the fastest on USC's team. They wouldn't allow his own high school coach, who was his water polo coach, who testified, to bring in his swim time. They said because my coach hadn't witnessed the swim time, it was part of the swim team. He couldn't bring that record into evidence even though he knew of the swim time. And that's how they calibrated water polo players. His own high school coach was not allowed to bring in swim time. And it went on and on from there. It went on. My own will was not included. Hundreds of examples at USC giving admissions boosts to people who made donations was excluded. Singers own notes were excluded. And even people who had cooperation agreements with the government were not allowed to testify by the government, or they were, I guess, pressured not to testify. They pled the Fifth at a state level. They said, even though we have immunity at the federal level, we're pleading the Fifth because we're worried the states are going to charge us. We could never interview Singer. We could never interview his CFO and other people. It was just total stymie of all of our evidence.
- [18:47]
C
How long did the trial go on?
- [18:48]
A
Went on for about three weeks.
- [18:49]
C
And what were you convicted of of all the charges?
- [18:53]
A
There were nine charges. I don't know what. There's honest services, fraud, bribery, federal programs, bribery. All these things were related to making the donation.
- [19:01]
C
When you heard what the jury found, did you think to yourself, well, I can't blame them with what they heard, or were you surprised?
- [19:10]
A
No, no, we were sunk. We knew we were sunk when they blocked our evidence. So we were going through the trial. I had hopes going in that we'd get a fair trial. But the trial was just as unfair as one could be. They started off by introducing all these other parents who all pled guilty, who all did bad acts. So you have to understand, Singer had 1750 plus clients. One of his colleagues who worked with him for 20 years, Joel Margulies, was quoted in USA Today saying singer had dark side accounts and he had wholesome accounts. And his wholesome accounts never knew about the dark side. Well, they only arrested 2% of Singer's clients, so clearly he must have had 1500 wholesome accounts. Like I was like Steve Jobs was and other people. But they brought in the 30 people who confessed. And they got on the stand, person after person and said, yeah, we were all bribing, we were all cheating on tests. We were all creating fake profiles. We knew Singer was a con man. And if you were smart, you knew Singer was a con man. And everybody was cheating. Everybody knew this. You can't speak for me. I don't know this person from a hole in the wall. The closest I ever got to Lori Loughlin was watching her on tv, you know, so to say that I knew what they were doing was absurd. But the jury heard that over and over and over. And so we were convicted through a guilt by association strategy. One, two, they blocked all my evidence, so none of my helpful evidence was allowed in. And then three, the judge gave jury instructions that were absurd. And for the first time in history, they said, the recipient of a bribe can be the victim of the bribe. So if you give money to USC and they give you a boost in the admissions, that's a bribe. And that has never been a bribe in history. And so they created these unusual rules. So we knew during the process that a conviction was highly likely. So then what the lawyers do, and I didn't know this was possible. So all of our evidence was excluded. The jury never got to see it. The public never got to see our evidence. But we had to keep offering it as offers of proof so they know we're going to lose. So now you have to make the appeal record stronger. So we're just spending all this time putting things in as offers of proof so that the appeal court could then see it and say, aha. They didn't let this in. That's not right. And it got to be so absurd. I'll never forget this, too. At the end, we still had, I don't know, 50 or more pieces of evidence left to introduce. And the judge was getting so fed up, he just said, what else do you have? We got 50 more pieces. I'm just going to dismiss it all en masse. He said, en masse. You don't know what it is. It doesn't matter what it is. I'm just overruling it. All en masse. I want to get this over with. This is the process. It felt like a Russian show trial. It really did. I remember my lawyers even talking about this is something they've never seen before. It was so extreme. They said, the good news is you'll have a great appeals record. But now I have to spend another two years fighting for the appeal.
- [21:45]
C
What happened on appeal?
- [21:46]
A
On appeal, we get everything overturned except for this minor tax issue. So all the core convictions were overturned. And the judges said, you know, this is totally unfair. You can't bring in other people's evidence. It was called something called Kodiakis. Was the Supreme Court case on that? They had other parents pleading guilty to acts that I didn't do, but that poisoned the jury. Then you blocked all of Mr. Wilson's evidence. Then you defined things as crimes that weren't even crimes. And so they overturned all the core convictions and left one minor tax conviction for deducting my donation, where I got a receipt on the wrong Line on my return.
- [22:20]
C
In the big picture. Well, we'll talk about the big picture in a minute. First, some money things. How much money did you pay Rick Singer for your. For help with your kids?
- [22:28]
A
It was about 6,000 a year. Went to 8,000 later on. So back in the 2010 era, it was, I think, 6,000 per year, plus you paid hourly for the tutors, about 75 or $100 per hour. And then the same with my daughter's. It was, I think, later on in 2018, I think it was about $8,000 per student for a year.
- [22:48]
C
Maybe $100,000 altogether, something like that.
- [22:51]
A
Less than that, probably.
- [22:51]
C
Okay.
- [22:53]
A
Over eight years, yeah.
- [22:55]
C
How much did your defense and appeal cost?
- [22:58]
A
Oh, millions. The way they do this, they bury you. First they bury you with nine charges in 180 years. Then they bury us with 3 million documents, over 5 million pages. You know what it takes just to load that? It costs something like $350,000 just to load those millions of pages in a readable form into the computers, let alone have lawyers look through them. So they bury you with legal costs. And so 98% of the people plead guilty. They can't afford it, and you don't have the time. And you don't want to deal with the stress of fighting against the federal government. Remember, these are federal government officers who have unlimited budgets and unlimited resources and unlimited time. They're going to work every day. You're dealing with this stress. They literally spent over $100 million, our guys estimate, pursuing this case.
- [23:44]
C
I think I know the answer. But if you had pled out very early on, wouldn't have cost you millions of dollars, and you might not have served any time. Should you have done that?
- [23:56]
A
Absolutely not. We thought about this long and hard. Right. This is the most painful decision I've ever had to make in my life. So we were advised early on by our lawyers, they said, john, to fight this, it's going to cost millions. It's going to take years. And the odds of winning, fighting against the federal government, not because they have unlimited resources, because they can tilt the playing field in, their advantage, are less than 2%. And it was easy to say, I'm just going to plead guilty to a crime I didn't commit. Believe me, that was the easy path out. You would save millions of dollars, save time, and move on with your life. But my wife and I talked about it with our kids, and I talked about it with her at length. And we decided in the end, I couldn't live with myself. We Thought, we're going to fight this and we're going to fight it for three reasons. One, I could never publicly confess to a crime I didn't commit. Two, and more importantly, doing that would then reinforce the false narrative. I did it because my kids weren't qualified. My kids were extremely, highly qualified. And the false narrative that they weren't and I bribed was something I couldn't live with and I couldn't taint them with that future and that, you know, tarring of their careers. And third, what the government did to me was just plain wrong. And I'll do whatever I can to make sure it doesn't happen again.
- [25:03]
C
What have your kids said to you about all this?
- [25:06]
A
They've been proud on the one hand that we fought and we won, but they've suffered severely as an adult, it's one thing, it's devastating to be falsely accused and then wrongfully convicted. But imagine, put yourself in my son's shoes. He's whatever he was at the time, 20 years old. He spent 12 years of his life training for 700 hours a year. So 7 to 10,000 hours. His whole identity was tied up in his athletic abilities. And to have him falsely accused of being a fake athlete was devastating. And it still follows him to this day because all of these accusations are on the Internet and they stay and they follow you forever. So it's a permanent scar for him. And it was devastating. And think about my poor daughters. They were only 16 years old, my twin daughters, when this happened. 16. You know how vulnerable you are as a 16 year old teenage girl. It's bad enough dealing with trolls and social media, pressures from your friends, but when the federal government accuses you of test cheating and says you're not qualified when it's not true, it's devastating. And think you worked your rear end off. You got a perfect score. I think only 2,800 girls that year got a perfect score out of two and a half million kids. So you work your tail off, you study hard at school, you get a perfect score. The other one got a near perfect score. And people say you're not qualified. You cheated. And how is a 16 year old to defend yourself against a federal prosecutor who's accusing you of cheating and smearing you as a test cheater and unqualified student?
- [26:33]
C
Did your kids did the stand during the trial?
- [26:35]
A
No, they did. My wife wouldn't and I wouldn't let them take the stand. They did actually write an affidavit and the prosecutor threatened to put them in prison. Too. So one of the instances that came up, there was a famous phone call in this case, the very first phone call that Singer made while he was being recorded. He made it from the FBI offices. Then they let Singer delete all the texts about it, and they deleted this call. It was a very helpful call. It was 43 minutes in their offices, 34 minute call. We have a record of it, but he deleted all of his records about it. And the prosecutor said, I wasn't even on the call. I said, what do you mean? How do you know who was on the call? You didn't record it. You said, and so my daughters signed an affidavit saying I was on the call. My wife signed an affidavit, and I did. And they tried to get me sentenced to more prison time because I lied when I didn't lie. And so they did sign that and said, well, if your daughter signed this too, then they can go to prison too. I said, what? Because they're lying too. What do you mean they're lying? You don't even know who's on the other end of the call. You didn't record it. You violated like seven different FBI policies. They destroyed the call, I think, because it was a very, very helpful call. I remember vividly it was the first call we had while he was being scripted by the FBI. And it must have gone terribly wrong from their point of view, because it was a very exonerating call. And it just disappeared. So my daughters did support me. They wrote an affidavit. They signed that illegal affidavit, and my wife did as well, because all of us were on the call together. And even there, my wife was petrified because they could put my daughters in prison for lying under oath. This is how absurd it was getting.
- [28:01]
C
I know that your case, as you described you said, was completely different than the others, but I still think people like me, watching from the outside, had a bigger overarching question, even about them. That the pressure to get your kids in a school and what the schools require and how they do it is so great and so daunting that people feel like they have to hire consultants. Or in the case of some of the other defendants, they admitted that they did some things that were not honest. I was surprised that this was a criminal case and not some kind of a civil complaint.
- [28:37]
A
Right. All the lawyers said the same thing. When this, when these charges first came out, we again talked to 10 law firms interviewing them. They all said, this is absurd. This is not a federal felony. Someone cheating on A test that's wrong. It should be a civil crime at best. So it was blown out of proportion from day one and everyone to this day thinks it was blown out of proportion. And we didn't do any of those bad acts. Test cheating is bad. I get that. But to make test cheating a federal felony is really taking it to a totally disproportionate level. Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through Instacart? Because maybe you only bought two wreaths but have 12 windows. Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the Advent calendar. Or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm. Or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason, this season Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul. Get decorations from the Home Depot, CVS and more through Instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees and terms apply. T Mobile 5G Internet keeps getting better. Boost your connection to harder to reach places with Home Internet plus and get Internet right where you want it with WI fi that reaches the attic. I finally have a home office. Get a free upgrade to T Mobile Home Internet plus while supplies last. Home Internet plus starts at 50 bucks a month with autopay and any voice line. Check availability@t mobile.com home Internet during congestion, Customers on this plan may notice speeds lower than other customers and further reduction of using greater than 1.2 terabytes per month due to data prioritization. After $20 bill credit plus $5 per month without auto pay debit, bank account required regulatory fees included for qualifying accounts. $35 connection charge applies.
- [30:12]
C
If people take one thing away from your experience, what would you say they should know?
- [30:18]
A
I think for me, the scariest part of this if the government puts you in its crosshairs for whatever reason, if you serve some ulterior purpose for them, the force and the power and the resource they have can be devastating. They've been able to weaponize the justice system against innocent people, and they can do that with impunity. And it's frightening. And that's why I'm fighting this as much as anything else. Because what they did to me was wrong and should never happen to anyone. And I think of all those people who have less resources than I had and how they're forced to plead guilty and how they're railroaded through an unfair process and it's outrageous and it should never happen again and I would do what I can to make sure that it doesn't Happen again. Like, there's probably a few other key facts here that were, I thought, very helpful during this process. One, my background, deep background education changed my life. Unlike the narrative that's out there, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon. I grew up in the projects of Hartford, Connecticut, with a single mom and three half siblings. We lived on welfare. And education changed my life. And so I've always valued education highly. I've been fortunate in my career. I've been very successful, and I've made a fair bit of money. In my will, I was giving significant amounts of money, more than a million dollars each, to Harvard and rpi. The schools I went to, my schools that I went to, Singer knew that.
- [31:38]
C
What's rpi?
- [31:39]
A
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It's an engineering school in upstate New York. Singer knew that, and he talked to me in this phone call that was lost, talked to me about moving up some of that donation to help my daughters and help in the admissions process. So I had already committed in my will years before I met Singer, 10 years before, to give millions of dollars to Harvard and to rpi. So for me, this just moving up a donation commitment that I already had and thought there was nothing wrong with that.
- [32:06]
C
Well, there really isn't. I mean, donations happen prior to admission all the time.
- [32:10]
A
Right. In fact, the other thing we did is we did just three or four more points. We didn't just do this on a lark. We did a lot of due diligence. We not only checked with our Goldman Sachs advisors about donating through Singer and the IRS website, the IRS website verified that Singer's foundation was in good standing. We went to the school. We went to usc. We visited my wife, myself, and my son. We met with a coach, and we met with a development person from USC to verify that donating through Singer was fine. They all told us what it was, that we appreciate it and would help in the admissions process. So we did our homework and we did our due diligence before we donated the money. And we got a receipt from USC for our donation. So we thought we had done nothing wrong. And I went and visited my son at school many times when he was playing on the team and when he was practicing. Why would I fly from Europe, where I was working, to California to watch him practice if this was all some kind of fraud? It wasn't.
- [33:00]
C
I thought of another question while you were talking. Did you speak to Singer after this accusation came forward, and did he tell Department of Justice attorneys that you did something fraudulent?
- [33:11]
A
No, we were Never allowed to speak to Singer after this charge came out, he said just the opposite. The only thing we ever saw of all the notes the FBI took for me, they only gave us seven lines. Seven lines from something like eight months of scripted setup calls. One of the lines was, johnny Wilson was a real water polo player. That's what he told the FBI. He was a real water. And he was unlike all the other parents who were faking it. A second line he put in was unsure if the dad ever saw the inaccuracies in the profile. He put in some inaccuracies in my son's profile.
- [33:43]
C
I didn't do that that the colleges used or saw.
- [33:45]
A
Right. He changed. My son said he was captain of the team his junior year when he wasn't. And he changed his swim time by 8%. I wouldn't have even known the swim time. I wasn't paying attention to the swim times. Every year in high school, he was getting 2 inches taller and 2 seconds faster. So I wouldn't have known his swim time from his junior year. But he changed his swim time. My son's swim time was still one of the fastest on the team, his actual swim time. So Singer said that to the FBI. So they knew I was innocent. If you step back, they knew I was innocent the whole time. There was overwhelming evidence that the prosecutors had that I was innocent, but it didn't matter to them because they needed me for the venue hook. So whether the evidence proved it or not, they didn't really care. And in fact, they blocked it at my trial because they knew it was so helpful.
- [34:28]
C
Is it too much of a game or a trick to get into college today?
- [34:33]
A
It's certainly tough, but frankly, I didn't really care where they went to school. I didn't have a big plus for this school or that school to me. I wanted to make sure they could be successful at whatever school they picked. And I was giving millions of dollars to schools to help first generation kids. In my will, it says specifically to fund scholarships for first generation kids. It said kids whose parents didn't have a chance to go to college. That's how I grew up. I grew up in a very humble, very modest beginning, like many Americans, literally grew up in poverty. In the public housing projects. I picked tobacco for four years at the age of 12. 40 hours a week in the summers for a dollar an hour. I appreciate the value of a dollar. But education changed my life and I wanted to give back. And my son was also the same way. My son, when he had a World record at nine. He made that a fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina victims. He felt badly for them. So he and his fourth grade classmates, they raised, I think in the end, $53,000 back in, whatever it was, 2005. So giving back has been a part of my family's values from an early age. And so for us, the college process was daunting. I wanted them to do the best job they could on their profiles, on their academics, and on their test scores. So I got them a tutor to help take those tests. I wanted to give him some of the advantages I didn't have, and he wouldn't get the advantage of legacy. I never had any advantage of legacy. And what Singer said about what schools were doing is the schools had five or 10 categories of preferred admissions. That's why he talked about the back door and the side door. He said schools give preferred admissions to legacies, to deans, interest list people, to friends or recommendations from the board of trustees to faculty, children to athletes, to major donors and so forth. He said, in fact, some of the top schools, half of their admission slots are given to those preferred categories. And if you don't have one of those preferred categories, your odds of getting in are cut by 50%. So that's what he said was the reason why you gave a donation, because it gets you a level playing field with people like legacies and others. I said, okay, fine, I'll give to whatever schools that the kids want to go to. I wanted to do something nice for the schools and to help my kids. At the same time, I didn't think it was illegal, and I don't think it is illegal. But the government tried to construe this as some kind of illegal bribe.
- [36:45]
C
What else?
- [36:46]
A
One other thing I did in this process that was very helpful that they ignored is before the trial, I wanted to prove my innocence. I was worried about the stress literally killing me, and the stress on my whole family was enormous. My wife was crying herself to sleep every night. So I said, I want to prove my innocence. I want to take a polygraph test. And so lawyers said they're not going to accept that it's not going to be credible because you're going to hire some random guy. I said, I want to hire the best people in the world to do this. I sought out. I had the former head of the FBI polygraph program. He ran the entire polygraph program for the entire FBI.
- [37:19]
C
What's his name?
- [37:20]
A
His name was Kendall Shull. So Kendall Shull ran the FBI program for polygraph and then he said, this is such an important case, I want to get another person to do an independent quality review. Don Crapel and Don Crapel ran the polygraph program for the entire CIA worldwide. He also ran the polygraph school that trained every polygraph expert in the government for 10 years. There couldn't be two stronger people whose credentials were impeccable. They both tested me. I spent three days. I'd never seen anyone spend three days. I had them ask me something like 20 something questions. I said, ask me any question about any aspect. I passed them all with flying colors. We gave that information to Netflix as well, and the government got it as well. And they dismissed it at my sentencing, saying it was all self serving. It's a real polygraph by the two experts in the world. What more could you ask for? But they didn't want to hear it because it didn't fit their narrative. But I went through a lot of effort. It wasn't that much money, but I went through a lot of effort to find the best people in the world. And I literally spent three days pushing myself into that. And again, it's very stressful. You could easily fail if you know the stress. I've never done this before. I didn't read about it, didn't know anything about it. I thought maybe I could fail because I'm just so nervous. But I ended up patching them all flying colors and said, look, I want to prove my innocence here. And so I did that as just an extra step to say, look, I am innocent. And the prosecutors totally ignored it. They just didn't care because it didn't fit their narrative. And that was also shocking to me. And then the last thing I wanted to mention to you is the other thing that was really harmful in this process. It's not only the government charges that were painful. But then Netflix railroaded me through a process and we warned them in advance where they actually created a movie, a documentary, they called it, and they displayed that and aired that before my trial. And they poisoned the jury, incredibly, with that. That was probably seen by 30 million people.
- [39:09]
C
What was the title?
- [39:10]
A
It was called Operation Varsity Blues.
- [39:12]
C
You suing them now?
- [39:13]
A
I am suing them now because what they depicted was totally false. And we gave them that information in advance. So they were forewarned because we knew they were coming out with something. We gave them all the record, all the facts that were in the public record. So for example, we sent them pictures of my son from a real water polo practice. If you see those pictures, they're very powerful. My son's arms were huge. And so he was really a water polo player at the national level. He was being recruited by other Division 1 schools and so he sent him pictures of that at a practice. And what Netflix used when they had my voice, an actor playing me showing was a kid standing in a pool in la in the shallow end up to his waist with a water pole ball in his hand. And then they show a photographer taking a picture and then photoshopping that onto a body of a kid in the pool. They knew that was totally false and yet they used it anyway. And so Netflix, with its 660 million people at that time, viewers worldwide, gets this one hour and 45 minute video where they actually mention my name in my words. I think 26 times or 24 times within the first 20 minutes. It's just John Wilson, John Wilson, John Wilson. And they're showing people test cheating. They're showing people faking photos. They're talking about people bribing on the phone. I was never even alleged to do any of those things, and yet they smeared me and my son with this documentary that was totally false. So we're now suing them as well. In this process. It's just been devastating. Think about the notoriety this case has gotten. And it's complicated. I understand. And it's now five years old, so most people don't want to hear the truth. But I've been gagged for five years through the legal process and we're still fighting one battle as we speak with the Boston lawyers. And so I haven't been able to speak out. And as bad as these accusations have been, it's even more frustrating that you can't even address them. You can't give your side of the story.
- [41:03]
C
I think a lot of people will be interested in what you have to say.
- [41:06]
A
I hope so.
- [41:13]
B
This story is expanded upon and profiled as a cover story in my latest edition of Full Measure, which airs every Sunday. You can watch a replay of the Varsity Blues John Wilson story from this past Sunday, October 6, by going to FullMeasure News. It should be pretty easy to find, or you can always do a search for it. Be sure and watch each and every episode of Full Measure. For a list of stations and times, you can go to cherylakison.com and click the Full Measure tab. Or just watch Sundays after it airs on TV. You can go online probably around noon at FullMeasure News and watch replays right there. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that if you did, as always, you'll leave a great review, share it with your friends and check out my other podcast, the the Sheryl Atkison Podcast. If you haven't already, I urge you to check out my new bestseller, Follow the Science How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures and Prevails. This book is becoming a huge success not because big media is advertising and promoting it, quite the opposite, but because of word of mouth and grassroots. Quite a few people are telling me they are sitting down and reading this practically cover to cover in one or two sittings. They're finding the information so helpful. And even those who consider themselves quite well informed on medical scandals and how the medical establishment has been co opted by special interests, they're saying that they knew virtually nothing of the documentation, the case studies and the explanations contained in Follow the Science. It makes a great gift for someone you care about coming up upon the holidays. Follow the Sciences available anywhere. Do your own research, make up your own mind. Think for yourself.