Parent who survived 'Operation Varsity Blues' says feds' college admission case was 'devastating'

In 2019, several Hollywood notables and dozens of others were swept up in so-called Operation Varsity Blues. The FBI accused parents, college employees and their go-betweens in a bribery scheme to get nominally unqualified students admitted to top colleges. 

What you might not have heard is John Wilson’s story. He’s the parent who drew the most charges, but fought them. And – after a grueling and expensive court battle – he finally came out on top.

Wilson: What the government did to me is something that's never happened to anyone in America. And what the prosecutors did to me once they put me in their crosshairs was so outrageous that if I hadn't experienced it firsthand, I wouldn't believe it in a million years. 

If Wilson was known for anything, it was as a self-made rags-to-riches success story and president of Staples, International. But his story changed drastically in March of 2019 when he returned to the U.S. from a business trip.

Wilson: I got off the plane. I'm going through the normal customs and immigration security checks. They pulled me aside, say there's something wrong with my passport. I go into a back room. And then, two FBI agents pushed me against the wall, handcuffed me, shackled me and told me I'm under arrest. I was shocked. I had no warning. This came out of the blue like a lightning bolt. 

Sharyl: You ever been arrested before?

Wilson: No, I'd never been arrested in my life. I'd never even been accused of a crime in my life. I've never been in a courthouse in my entire life.

Sharyl: What'd they tell you was wrong?

Wilson: 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.”

Sharyl: And you had no idea this was related to college or anything at the time?

Wilson: 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.”

The FBI took him to a federal prison in Houston.

Sharyl: And what'd they do with you from there?

Wilson: They stripped me down, put me in this big, I dunno, common area shower room. And the guards took a couple 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." And the guard says to me, "You better watch your back in here. You know, you're the only old white guy,” he says, “and they're gonna assume you're a pedophile and they hate pedophiles here and one of 'em 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 gonna think you're a p**** and they're really gonna f*** you up.” That's what he said, pardon my French, that’s what he said to me. I said, “Oh my god.”

The next morning he learned from his brother, an attorney, why he’d been locked up.

Wilson: 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, what is this? What’s, 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.” 

“Singer” was Rick Singer, considered the “mastermind” in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, nicknamed after the 1999 film about small town high schoolers looking for a way out – some through football scholarships.

Among the parents arrested were actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. They were accused of paying people to get their kids into top universities by bribing coaches, creating fake athletic photos, and cheating on tests. Both pleaded guilty in the case, in which 33 wealthy parents were charged.

Prosecutors claimed Wilson paid $220,000 to have his son, Johnny Wilson, recruited as a water polo athlete at the University of Southern California. And they said he spent $1 million to unfairly get his twin daughters into Harvard and Stanford.

Wilson admits he hired Singer and donated to colleges – like millions of parents have done – to increase odds their kids will get accepted in a fiercely competitive landscape.

But he says they were well qualified in their own right and there was no cheating, lying, or bribery. It was Wilson’s financial adviser at Goldman Sachs who introduced him to Singer as a consultant who could maximize a student’s chances.

Sharyl: I didn't even know that industry existed. So there are people you can hire to help your kid get in a good college?

Wilson: Yes. I didn't know it existed either until the Goldman Sachs person called me up. 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.

Sharyl: And your goal was ultimately what?

Wilson: 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'd be a good fit for him.

Wilson says Johnny legitimately won a spot on USC’s water polo team. He had impressive swim times, and a world record at age 9 as the youngest person to swim the frigid, choppy waters from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco.

The younger Wilson said on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2006: "See that island over there, that is Alcatraz and I am going to swim from there all the way to shore there. It is 1.4 miles and I’m a little nervous." 

Wilson broke the world record, the youngest ever to make this swim.

His dad was convinced he could prove, at trial, that his children’s admissions to prestigious colleges weren’t due to bribery. 

Prosecutors wanted him to plead guilty.

Wilson: And 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 gonna 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 gonna plead guilty no matter how many charges you put on me. I didn't do anything wrong.”

Sharyl: But the jury convicted you?

Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. They ran an unfair trial that was just outrageous.

He argues he faced a prosecutor-friendly judge who stacked the deck.

Wilson: I’ll give you a couple of examples of things they blocked. My daughters’ perfect ACT score, and near perfect scores were inadmissible.

Sharyl: In other words, that would've shown that they deserved to get in college. Not that they were given a favor?

Wilson: Right. They earned their admissions. They were qualified on their own merits for admission, even at Harvard and Stanford. 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's his water polo coach, who testified, to bring in his swim time.

Sharyl: When you heard what the jury found, did you think to yourself, “Well, I can't blame 'em with what they heard?”

Wilson: Absolutely. 

Sharyl: Or were you surprised?

Wilson: No, no. We were sunk. We knew we were sunk when they blocked our evidence. 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.

Sharyl: What happened on appeal?

Wilson: On appeal, we got everything overturned except for this minor tax issue. So all the court convictions were overturned and the judges said, you know, “This is totally unfair.”

Wilson paid a fine for the tax charge: improperly deducting USC donations. All the charges related to getting his kids into college were thrown out. The official Justice Department statement is that in May 2023, an appellate court affirmed the tax conviction and vacated and remanded the remaining counts of conviction. 

But the fight isn’t completely over. Today, Wilson is suing Netflix over a documentary that he says smeared him and poisoned the jury pool. 

He says he sent Netflix a real photo of his son playing water polo. Yet the documentary depicted him pasting the head of his son, shown in the film as a scrawny boy, onto the body of an athlete, for a college application.

Wilson: And so he was really a water polo player at the national level. He was being recruited by other division one schools. And so we sent them pictures of that at a practice. And what Netflix used, was a kid standing in a pool in LA in the shallow end up to his waist with a water polo 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.

Wilson successfully fought back criminal charges that he’d bribed to get his kids into college. But in the end, he says he lost five years of his peak career earnings potential, and spent his life’s savings – more than $10 million – on legal bills.

Wilson: I think for me the scariest part of this, if the government puts you in his crosshairs for whatever reason, 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 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'm gonna do what I can to make sure that it doesn't happen again. 

Netflix says its documentary never implied Wilson photoshopped his son’s photo … it depicted a different parent and son – and was wholly accurate. A Massachusetts judge recently denied Netflix' motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative journalist and managing editor of "Full Measure." Her most recent book is "Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails."