Education

Some Varsity Blues parents seek day in court

Wilson’s Netflix lawsuit hints at possible defense

By , 0 Comments

OPERATION VARSITY BLUES keeps rolling along, as the US attorney’s office continues to rack up convictions using wiretap recordings of wealthy parents trying to buy “side door” access to elite colleges for their sons and daughters.

Elizabeth Kimmel, a California-based CEO, pleaded guilty on Monday to working with side door mastermind Rick Singer to pay $275,000 to facilitate her daughter’s admission to Georgetown University as a tennis recruit and $250,000 to facilitate her son’s admission to the University of Southern California as a pole vault recruit. In both cases, the children weren’t college-caliber athletes.

According to a spread sheet produced by the US attorney’s office, Kimmel was the 32nd parent to plead guilty in the case. She joins 13 others, including Singer, who have also pleaded guilty. One parent, Robert Zangrillo, got off with a pardon from former president Donald Trump. 

Now the case may be moving in a different direction as some of the remaining defendants are indicating they won’t plead guilty and intend to go to trial next month. At a pre-trial hearing Wednesday, three defendants – John Wilson of Lynnfield; Marci Palatella of Hillsborough, California; and Gamal Abdelaziz of Las Vegas – signaled they want their day in court, which would force the US attorney’s office to actually convince a jury that they are guilty. 

Wilson, a prominent business executive who currently heads Hyannis Port Capital, is accused of conspiring to bribe the USC water polo coach to get his son a slot on the team and admission to the school. He is also accused of paying a total of $1 million to Singer for side-door access for his daughters to gain admission to Stanford and Harvard. 

On paper, the Wilson case is similar to the others where the defendants pleaded guilty. There are damaging statements captured on the wiretaps of conversations with Singer. There is the allegation that USC water polo coach Jovan Vavic lied to school officials about the Wilson son’s ability to swim, saying he “would be the fastest player on our team.” 

Most of the evidence against Wilson comes via Singer, who may be forced to testify if Wilson or any of the other remaining defendants end up going to trial. Another wild card is Vavic, who has been charged by the government but has insisted he is not guilty. 

Wilson, who has already sued Netflix for including him in a documentary on the Varsity Blues case, shows no signs of backing down. In the lawsuit, he provides some clues as to how he will defend himself if the criminal case against him goes to court, including the fact he took a two-day polygraph test affirming his innocence.

Meet the Author

Bruce Mohl

Editor, CommonWealth
Bio » Latest Stories »

About Bruce Mohl

Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.

About Bruce Mohl

Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.

“Lacking the type of evidence of fraud or other willful wrongdoing that the government has against many of the other parents, the government’s case against Mr. Wilson is made up of out-of-context email fragments and a series of deliberately ambiguous sound bites, scripted by government agents over several months of set up calls with Singer,” the Netflix lawsuit says. 

“Mr. Wilson is not accused of ‘photoshopping’ or staging photos for fake athletic profiles or making a payment to line the pockets of any athletic coach or other university employee in order to gain admission to a prestigious college or university. Rather, Mr. Wilson is accused of making payments which Singer and others assured him were legitimate donations, in order to assist with (but not guarantee) the admission of his very qualified children to their preferred universities,” the lawsuit says. “Employing a completely novel legal theory which stretches the definition of ‘bribery’ beyond all recognition, the government has chosen to label these payments as ‘bribes.’”

Tagged in: /