Rigged Justice

How the College Admissions Scandal Ruined an Innocent Man's Life

John Vandemoer

• Editore: HarperOne
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780063020122

The former Stanford University sailing coach sentenced in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal tells the riveting true story of how he was drawn unwittingly into a web of deceit in this eye-opening memoir that offers a damning portrait of modern college administration and the ways in which justice and fairness do not always intersect.

For eleven years, John Vandemoer ran the prestigious Stanford University sailing program in which he coached Olympians and All-Americans. Though the hours were long and the program struggled for funding, sailing gave Vandemoer's life shape and meaning.

But early one morning, everything came crashing down when Vandemoer, still in his pajamas, opened the door to find FBI and IRS agents on his doorstep. He quickly learned that a recruiter named Rick Singer had used him as a stooge in a sophisticated scheme designed to take advantage of college coaches and play to the endless appetite for university fundraising—and wealthy parents looking for an edge for their college-bound children.

Vandemoer was summarily fired, kicked out of campus housing, his children booted from campus daycare. The next year of his life was a Kafkaesque hellscape, and though he was an innocent man who never received a dime was the first person to be convicted in what became known as the Varsity Blues scandal.

A true story that reads like a suspense novel, Rigged Justice lays bare how a sophisticated scheme could take advantage of college coaches and university money—and how one family became collateral damage in a large government investigation that dominated national headlines.

1

FEBRUARY 2019

You probably don’t think you need to hear this. I wouldn’t have guessed I did. But here’s the thing: when special agents from the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation knock on your door at 7 a.m. and flash their badges and ask whether they can come in, your answer should be no. Tell them you’re happy to reschedule when you have a lawyer by your side.

Maybe that knock will come, as it did for me, after you have just finished changing your daughter’s diaper, and the remnants of your kids’ breakfasts—yogurt and smashed berries—are all over your Red Sox T-shirt and pajama pants. Maybe you and your wife will be in the middle of snapping onesies and tying shoes and packing backpacks so you can get to daycare drop-off before you both rush off to work. You’re going to be puzzled by the agents’ appearance on your front step and probably a little nervous—I know I was—and your instinct will be to say, “Sure, of course, come in.”

You may even offer them coffee and help with their chairs as they settle in at your kitchen table. Then you’ll join them and fold your hands in front of you and look at them openly, ready to help. You’ll think you are doing the right thing—after all, you have nothing to hide—but you will be making a colossal mistake.

Only innocent people let them in, my lawyer would tell me later. Criminals know not to do that.

But there they were, sitting across from each other: two federal agents, both female, both around thirty years old, both in gray pantsuits—all business. The IRS agent, who had introduced herself as Elizabeth Keating, had placed a blank yellow legal pad and a pen in front of her. The other woman, from the FBI, whose name I did not catch, had pulled a stapled packet of papers out of a portfolio. From where I was sitting at the end of the oval table, I could make out a few words on the top page. I saw my name. I saw “Stanford University.”

“So, we just want to confirm a few things with you,” the FBI agent said. “You are John Vandemoer.”

I heard Boston in her pronunciation. Vanda-moah.

“You are the head sailing coach at Stanford.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Beautiful school. Must be nice living here right on campus?”

“It is. Yes. It’s great.”

My wife, Molly, and I had moved to this development of spacious, two-story houses built by Stanford for its coaching staff seven years before. We’d brought each of our two children home from Stanford’s Children’s Hospital after they’d been born, and now they were enrolled in a terrific on-campus daycare center a few blocks from our house. Our fellow coaches were our neighbors and friends. We went to each other’s competitions, cheered each other’s successes, and celebrated holidays and birthdays together. Molly and I loved the community and life we’d built here.

“Now, part of your job, Mr. Vandemoer is recruiting athletes for the sailing team. Is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Would you walk us through that a little? How recruiting works at Stanford?”

I started in on the basics—that academics were the primary consideration, that there were no scholarships in college sailing, and that my sport wasn’t part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), so I wasn’t under those constraints. I told them that Stanford admissions allotted me six or seven slots for recruited sailors each year, provided those students met the school’s stringent academic standards. Agent Keating took notes while I spoke.

The FBI agent asked me about application timelines and test scores and GPAs, often referring to the paper in front of her as if she were reading from a script. They were the kinds of questions I’d answered happily hundreds of times at college nights and high school regattas during my eleven years at Stanford and before that, as head coach at the US Naval Academy in Maryland. Recruiting was one of my favorite parts of the job. I knew a lot of coaches who dreaded it, but I liked interacting with young athletes, learning what their strengths were, and figuring out where they might fit on the team. What I didn’t enjoy was having to tell kids no. But I prided myself on being honest if I didn’t see a spot for them. I never wanted to give anyone false hope.

“And when you find a student you want, what do you?” she asked, turning to the next page in her packet.

“I take their academic information to the admissions office. They’re only looking at grades and test scores at that point, just the feasibility of them getting in.”

“And this happens when?”

“July and August, mostly. I do it then because the Ivies can’t offer kids anything until September 1st. I try to, you know, beat them to the punch.”

“Makes sense,” she said, giving me a fleeting smile.

I smiled back. Agent Keating didn’t look up.

“And if they have the appropriate grades and scores, what happens then?”

“Then admissions might give me a pink envelope to send to them,” I said.

“Pink envelope?”

“Pink envelopes are what Stanford calls early application packets that are just for recruited athletes.”

I told them that Stanford usually offered me about a dozen pink envelopes for potential recruits. Receiving that application didn’t guarantee the school would accept the kids, and it wasn’t a promise that I’d ultimately use one of my admissions slots on them. It just meant they were over the first hurdle in the recruiting process. Sometimes, the high school students who received the pink envelopes decided not to apply to Stanford. But if they did fill out the application, those bright pink envelopes went into a special pile and got an early read from admissions officers.

“And this gives them a leg up on regular applicants?”

“To a certain extent, yes, because they’ve already been vetted. Admissions wouldn’t offer a pink envelope to them unless they had a very good shot at getting in.”

“And do you know how many of your recruits get in?”

“My acceptance rate is about 80 percent,” I said.

“And the usual Stanford acceptance rate?”

“It’s less than 5 percent.”

She looked up at me, tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes. “Okay. So, your support does help a great deal.”

I detected a hint of disapproval in her voice. I shifted in my seat. Upstairs, I could hear Nicholas repeatedly asking Molly who Daddy was talking to. Nora had started to cry. I felt terrible that Molly had to deal with the kids by herself. I glanced at my watch. It was almost 8 a.m. We both had to get to work.

“Can you tell me what this is about?” I asked.

I knew a big NCAA basketball scandal had blown up recently; recruiting rules had been violated, coaches had been fired, shoe company executives had been caught bribing athletes. It had been all over the national news. I thought they might be gathering background information for that case, getting the lay of the recruiting land, something like that.

“Just a few more questions,” Agent Keating said, glancing up at me.

The FBI agent turned to another page. I spotted a familiar name. Rick Singer.

“Now, Mr. Vandemoer, I want to ask you about some donations to the sailing program,” she said. “Do you remember a man by the name of Rick Singer?”

“Yes.”

“And he is?”

“He’s a college placement counselor I’ve worked with.”

“And he donated to your team, did he not?”

“Yes, he did.”

She asked how I met Rick Singer and how often I spoke to him. I did my best to summarize our handful of encounters since he’d first called me in 2016.

“So, what’s this about?” I asked again. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“He might have done some bad stuff, yeah. We’re just following up.”

Molly and the kids came down the stairs. The two agents stayed seated while they introduced themselves. Molly said hello and then looked at me with raised eyebrows. I gave her a look to say, No idea.

“I’m going to take the kids now,” Molly said. She had Nora in her arms and a diaper bag on her shoulder. I asked to be excused so I could help her load the stroller for the ten-minute walk to the Stanford daycare center.

“What’s going on?” Molly asked when we got outside.

“I don’t know.” I bent down to buckle Nicholas in. “They’re asking questions about that big donor, Rick Singer. I think maybe he’s in trouble. I’ll call you when they leave.”

“Beautiful family,” both women said when I sat back down at the table.

“So, we were talking about donations,” the FBI agent said. “Would that be a factor in your decision to recruit if the family had the means to donate?”

“In my decision to recruit?” I said. “No, I mean, families do donate. We welcome donations, but that wouldn’t—”

“Would you take money for recruits?”

“Donations?”

“How much money would you take?”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me. How much families donate?”

“What about Rick Singer? What was your arrangement with him?”

“No arrangement, really. He brought me a couple of possible recruits, but they didn’t pan out.”

“You had a financial arrangement with him.”

“He made some donations to the team. His clients wanted to donate, and then he—”

“But you h...