June 13, 2025 • 30 mins
Few people know that not everyone accused in the infamous college admission bribery scandal, that included celebrities like Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, was guilty. One innocent family continues fighting to clear their reputation after being caught in the net of the Varsity Blues Scandal in 2019. Those parents have written a book called "Varsity Blues: The Scandal Within the Scandal" and started a charity to help other Americans who may find themselves wrongly accused by the federal government. Today's episode includes some of that experience shared by Author John Wilson.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hughes of the Virginia
News Network. Few people know that not everyone accused in
the infamous college admission bribery scandal that included celebrities like
Felicity Huffman and Laurie Laughlin was guilty. One innocent family
continues fighting to clear their reputation after being caught in
the net of the Varsity Blues scandal in twenty nineteen.
(00:29):
Those parents have written a book called Varsity Blues, The
Scandal within the Scandal, and started a charity to help
other Americans who may find themselves wrongly accused by the
federal government. Today's episode includes some of that experience shared
by author John Wilson. Welcome to the show, mister Wilson.
I'm so glad you could join us today to talk
(00:49):
about your new book.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Great, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
So why don't you start by telling us a little
bit about who you are and what prompted you to
write This.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Name was John Wilson, and I had basically lived the
American dream for most of my life, followed all the
rules and did what I thought was right and married
a wonderful woman, the love of my life, and for
thirty years we were very happy and raised our three
children and had lived the American dream. Education changed my life,
(01:21):
allowed me to escape poverty, and helped me to succeed
in a business career. And that all came crashing down
in March of twenty nineteen when I was swept up
falsely as part of the nationwide scandal called Operation Varsity Blues.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
All right, and I remember that, But why don't you
tell the audience a little bit about remind them of
what happened, and then if you'll tell us a little
bit about how you got involved in that.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Sure, at its core, the scandal was about parents who
were abusing their privilege. It included many famous celebrities like
Felicity Huffman and Laurie Laweauflin, and other wealthy parents, primarily
on the West Coast, who were confessed to cheating on tests,
bribing coaches, and creating fake profiles for their children in
(02:11):
sports that they didn't even play, all to get their
unqualified children accepted into top colleges. And I understand how
the outrage in the public sentiment was just incredible. For
this story, we didn't do any of those things. And
that's the frustrating part for me and my family. Our
children were all highly qualified on their own merits. My daughters,
(02:31):
my twin daughters, got a perfect score and a nine
to nine percentile score on the ACT. To put that
in perspective, fewer than five thousand people out of one
point eight million students worldwide to take the test get
a perfect score. My son was a highly qualified athlete.
He competed nationally and internationally in swimming and water polo
for a decade. He had a world record swimming when
(02:53):
he was younger, and he was competing on the Stanford
club team for seven years throughout middle school and high school,
and he won the national champ ships one year on
that team, and he was invited twice to the US
Olympic Development Team program. So he was a real athlete.
He joined the US team and so he was a
real athlete. He wasn't a fake athlete. And my donations
(03:13):
that I made through the Central con Man and this scheme,
Rick Singer went to USC into IRS certified charities and
I got a receipt from USC for my donations and
they've kept my money to this day. And so our
case was very, very different, and we were swept up,
as we learned over time, for one reason here, and
that was geography.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Oh Man. So it was all about where you were, yes.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
And what happened is that the con man at the
center of this scheme named Rick Singer, he ran a
legitimate business. He had a legitimate business providing tutoring and
counseling for many, many families, myself included. He had three
thousand clients. He was recommended to us by Goldman Sachs.
My advisor from Goldman Sachs, who had known for a decade,
called me up when my son was entering high school
(03:59):
and said, you ought to consider using this guy, Rick Singer.
He works with a number of our clients at Goldman,
and he has a rolodex that's pretty famous and includes
people like Steve Jobs and Joe Montana and so forth.
And so when Goldman Sachs recommends someone like that and
says that he's done a lot of work with other clients,
you assume he's been vetted. And so we trusted Singer,
(04:19):
and he did give legitimate service to us for a
number of years. He did real tutoring his company for
my son and my daughters later on, and he did
real college counseling for us, so we had no reason
to suspect. In fact, if you look at of singers
three thousand clients, only one percent wherever charged, they had
what they called wholesome accounts like we were, and dark
side accounts, and so only one percent of his accounts
(04:40):
were dark side, and his colleague said publicly that the
wholesome accounts never knew about the dark side accounts. I
didn't know he had dark side accounts. People were cheating
on tests and things like that. And so as you
looked further, as we were charged here, we tried to say,
why was I charged? My case is totally different than
all the other parents who were charged. And as it
turns out, this case was uncovered by the Boston based
(05:03):
prosecutors who found someone in Connecticut on an unrelated charge
who gave them a referral that led to Rick Singer.
And when they started pulling on that thread, they discovered
that there were a number of Hollywood celebrities and other
wealthy people on the West Coast involved in this set
of false activities. So they knew there would be high profile,
high visibility opportunities here for the media, and a lot
(05:25):
of prosecutors can look at these media opportunities as being
a once in a lifetime career boost. So they wanted
this case to stay in Boston, but they needed a
basis to justify bringing all the parents from California and
two hundred and fifty people in total back and forth
to Boston. So they had two hundred and fifty people,
including the defendants, including their lawyers, including the schools, including
(05:45):
the FBI agents, including singers organization. So they needed some
base that justify bringing those two hundred and fifty people
back and forth from California to Boston. And I was
that person. I was the only singer client out of
three thousand that lived in Massa. So they charged me
as part of this false conspiracy to help justify bringing
all the trials to Boston that could boost their careers.
(06:09):
And that's really the shameful part of this whole thing.
Despite all the overwhelming evidence that they had that we
were innocent and we were very different than everyone else,
they charged me anyway.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Wow, that is I'm almost speechless, and that's you know,
that's a big deal for me. I mean, I'm in
media that is just I can't even fathom what that
must have felt like. And I feel like and you
can tell me if you think the same thing. That
sounds like a weaponization of our courts. I mean, that's
(06:42):
just wrong.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's absolutely wrong, and it's been incredibly painful for my
entire family.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's been a seven year nightmare.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
You can imagine my family to poor children. My twin
daughters were only sixteen years old when this happened. Imagine
how they would be devastated, and how they were devastated
this and my son as well. So, you know, despite
their accomplishments and being highly qualified, to the media falsely
smear them, and they were being fed a lot of
false narrative by the prosecutor.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Was just despicable.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Here we thought these prosecutors supposed to protect innocent children,
and yet they publicly smeared them. For example, they fed
the media lies about my son. They said my son
was an alleged athlete. They knew he had a world record,
They knew his high school coach recommended him to the
USC team. They knew he was invited to the US
Olympic team twice. They knew he was invited to play
on other D one teams being recruited, and they knew
he played on the USC team, and yet they fed
(07:33):
the media the false narrative that my son was an
alleged athlete. You know, So that kind of thing is
just beyond weaponization. That's just vindictive and you know, mean
spirited and just it's unforgearable as a father to see
your children falsely attacked by government representatives.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Is one thing. To attack me as an adult.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Falsely, but to falsely accuse my children as being unqualified
is beyond words.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
That's exactly what I was just thinking. I'm also a parent,
and like you said, it's one thing to come after me,
but to come after my children, especially when you know
your twin girls were miners. I'm not sure how your
son was at the time, but I mean, they're minor
children who have done nothing to deserve this. Can you
kind of tell us what it was like like when
(08:17):
you found out that you were a part of this.
Did you find out by being served, did you find
out through the media, How did you find out and
what did that feel like?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Now?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
The experience there was also very traumatizing. I had never
been arrested or accused of crime in my life. And
so I was getting off an airplane in Houston, Texas,
going to meet a client, and two FBI agents arresting
at the airport pushed me against the wall, handcuffy and
tell me I'm under arrest for honest services fraud.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I was shocked.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
I said, what is that? What does that even mean?
I was even more surprised by their answer is that
we don't know. We never even heard of this crime before.
Oh wow, I said, how can you be a wrestled
or something you don't even know what it is? I said,
this has got to be the wrong John Wilson. There's
fifteen thousand John Wilson's in the US. And then they
confirmed my address in Massachusetts and no, you're the Massachusetts guy.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And I was just flabberg actid.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And so they proceeded to book me and take the
DNA swabs and fingerprints and profile pictures and so forth.
Then they brought me to a prison, not to a job,
to a federal prison in Houston with eight hundred and
fifty inmates. They hand him up for the prison guards there.
They shackled my ankles and handcuffed me there and I
went through that prison process. They then stripped me down,
(09:30):
hosed me down in a large common shower with a
couple of hoses. With these big power hoses, it felt
like an animal. And then they gave me a jumpsuit.
And before they put me in my cell block. My
cell block had about sixty people, including inmates from the
general population. It's like you see in the movies, a
two story cell block and the guard booth. Just before
they put me in the cell block, and one of
the guards says, what you're back in there? He says,
(09:51):
as an older white guy, they're all going to assume
that you're a pedophile.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I said, what, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
They're going to assume you're a pedophile, and they hate
pedophiles in here. And someone made to stab you with
a shift So I was totally stabbed me. I said,
I even know why I'm here. So I spent the
next two days in sheer terror, word that someone's gonna
stab me before I even knew why I was even
charged and why I was even there. Wow, that was
just day one. That's just part of the hardball tactics
(10:16):
that the government can use when they weaponize the justice
system for the wrong purpose. They wanted to intimidate me,
to get me to plead guilty immediately. But I'm a fighter.
My background is very different than what the media has
been led to believe, and so that helped me really
think about fighting and taking this on.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah. Oh my gosh. So from the time they showed
up at the airport until you're and I'm blown away
that you were taken to a prison. By the time
from from time you got you know, encountered at the
airport to the time you're in, how long did that
was it like an hour? Two hours?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
About an hour or two? About an hour or two,
And it's really fast. Two days in the prison, Yeah,
really fast, And yeah, I know it is incredibly fright.
I can be locked in my cell, I said, to
be safe. I said, no, you can't be locking yourself
until locked down at night. And if you're high yourself,
they'll think you're a real.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Bad word and.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
They'll try to f you upright, And so they said
you can't.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
You got to walk around. Just watch her back in there.
And so I was literally terrified for the next day
and a half.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
And I still didn't know why I was there. And
seems like a due process violation.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
In and of itself.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, so did you get a chance to call your wife?
I mean, surely, she was, like, where in the world
did he go?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I got one phone call.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
My wife was actually out of the country, so I
couldn't reach her, and so I reached my assistant because
she was nine time zones ahead from where we were
in Texas. And so I reached my assistant and had
her call my wife. The next day and my brother,
who was a civil attorney, who came down the next day,
met me at the prison. So they took me out
(11:42):
of the common cell block, shackled me, and handcuffed me.
I shuffled to a meeting room where I met through
a plexigass wall with my brother and a Texas criminal lawyer.
And that's the first time I learned that this was
all about some kind of college admission scandal. They told
me I was arrested with fifty other people for cheating
on tests and bribing coach and putting together fake profiles.
I said, I didn't do any of those things. They
(12:03):
must have the wrong John Wilson, I said to them again.
And that was how this started. And it just got
worse and worse from there. Over the next six plus years.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Wow. And all of this so that a prosecutor can
try to get his fifteen minutes of fame, basically is
what I'm understanding.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And they did. They got more than their fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
This case was so high profile that every time someone
was charged or plug guilty or was sentenced, they got
to milk the media to the nth degree. So these
prosecutors got millions of hits in the media for the careers,
and both the lead prosecutors found new jobs before this
trial even happened. And I can see how that is
very attractive and appealing. So they can move from one hundred,
(12:42):
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars government job to a
million dollar partner role.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
At some of these big national law firms.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
And so that temptation is very great for some of
these people, and that's how they make their careers, either
politically or get into a very large, high profile law firm.
And so that temptation I understand. But to do what
they did to me and my family is to spicable.
The things I'll share in the book, you know, the
skin within the scandal will shop most of your audience.
(13:10):
I'll give one or two examples in addition to just
the hardball tactics of arresting me and throwing me in
that prison. You know, they went through all of my emails.
They violated the scope with the search warrant. They didn't
just look at my emails with Singer. They looked at
all of our personal emails for over a decade. I
think it was one hundred and eighty thousand emails. But
it included things like family photos from vacations. So they
had pictures of my daughters and my son at twelve
(13:32):
years old wearing swimsuits, right, and they were sharing that
with two hundred and fifty lawyers on this case website,
and we begged with the judge to take that down.
They said, no, that's what you get for being accused
of this kind of crime. So they had things like
our family photos. Imagine my twin daughters, pictures of them
in swimsuits at twelve years old being shared with hundreds
(13:53):
of people.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Just creepy. Beyond being wrong, it's just creepy.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Who knows what kind of people could see those things,
And the same with my son and medical So the
things they did again and again that we share in
this book, well, I think certainly scare people and shock people.
And the worst part, from my point of view, if
they can do this to someone like me, they can.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Do to other people too.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Oh and a heartbeat and whatever happened to innocent until
proven guilty? I mean, that used to be such a
thing that was said all through my childhood by my
own family and by everyone in society around me. And
it seems like that has just been tucked away somewhere
quietly now and we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Well, I think it's been flipped on its head, frankly,
that you know right now, given their conviction rates, given
their unlimited resources and the way they can play hardball
at every step in this process, the federal prosecutors win.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Ninety nine point six percent of the time. Think about that.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Ninety nine point six percent of the time they get
a conviction either pleading because people can't afford and don't
have the resources and their will.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Power to fight, or through a trial process.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
So with that being said, I can understand where the
media and others assume you're guilty. If you're accused, there's
a ninety nine point six percent chance you're going to lose,
and so you're guilty, and I can see how that
plays itself out with the media and with others, and
especially in a high profile case where you had forty
nine other parents who played guilty and me right, and
so that set of facts alone just damned you in
(15:21):
the eyes of the media, both the streaming media, the
public media, and some of the trolls and things that
are out there. So it's just been devastating from every perspective.
But I think the government has used and abused their
system so much that now it is essentially you're guilty
until you're proven innocent in our core system.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
And even then if somebody you know, unfortunately we've seen
this even recently. You know, media can put out a
headline that is very damaging, but their retraction is going
to be on the very back page, very quietly, very small,
you know. And if they want you to believe something,
then that I will say what they want you to believe,
(16:01):
and then that retraction meets all the legal requirements of
what they have to do so that they don't get prosecuted.
I mean, is there any retribution for you with these prosecutors?
Can you sue them?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Or the prospers essentially have immunity. So that's very frustrating,
and even some of the media can do what you suggested.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
So, for example, on the first day when this came out,
I was confused with another John Wilson, same name, different
person in Massachusetts who lived in Boston, who had some
prior felony convictions for some securities fraud.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
That wasn't me.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
But the headlines in the newspaper article right on the
front page said John Wilson's are to be convicted of
some other felonies.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Well, it's not me.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
We corrected that, but as you said, it came out
a week later, page thirty four as a footnote. So
the headline in the front page is John Wilson, a
prior fellon, has a prior conviction, blah blah blah, when
it wasn't true. So that kind of stuff can be
devastating in this entire process. Perhaps the most vicious thing
that happened, though, it was Netflix coming out with a
(17:01):
documentary before my trial even happened. And so we are
actually suing Netflix, and we won the very first major hurdle,
the motion to dismiss or yeah, the motion to dismiss.
We won that and messress supirit courts. We're going to
trial and we're going through discovery now. But what Netflix
did was just devastating. They smeared me through the same
kind of tactic as the government. They basically put me
(17:21):
in a movie that they called a documentary with nine
or ten other families who all confessed through the crimes
of cheating and bribing and so forth.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
That I never confessed to.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I never did.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
And so they put me in that movie and they.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Showed me or the person playing me, or the words
something like twenty five times in the first twenty three minutes.
So it just smeared me again and again and again
twenty five times with other people's bad acts. And so
they basically painted me as being the worst parent of
any parent in their film. And so it poisoned the
jury pool even before my trial began. Oh no, and
(17:54):
so it's just all rayed. Think about Netflix, the biggest
streamer in the world, puts out a documentary, a falsely
labeled documentary that makes people think it's true, and they
have two hundred and ninety million subscribers around the world
in one hundred and ninety countries and half a billion viewers.
So just think about that, and it's still out there today,
this movie. It never got corrected to say all my
(18:14):
core charges were overturned, or that, you know, we didn't
plead guilty like the others, and that my facts that
we gave them in advance were very different. And that's
the most damning part for them, is that we gave
them a warning letter. My lawyers gave them a letter
because they pre announced their movie with five hundred and
fifty pages of documents and facts that proved my innocence
(18:35):
that were all available on the public record. I also
voluntarily took a polygraph test with the former head of
the FBI Polygraph Division and secondarily checked by the former
head of the CIA polygraph Division worldwide. I passed all
the tests with flying colors. They had all of that
and all the evidence of the government had and they
still went ahead with their movie and it basically smeared
(18:56):
me and took things out of context so it would
sound much worse than it actually was.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
And to this day they haven't made any corrections.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Wow, I can't even imagine that. Is that what prompted
you to write this book.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I think we wrote the book for two or three reasons.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Really, my wife and I.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
One is to set the record straight right, to really
clarify that we were different. My children are qualified, and
that was really a very important thing for us to
do for the record. The second thing we want to
do was to hold some of those institutions accountable. There
are three institutions that really wronged us here. It was
the government, it was Netflix, and even USC and I'll
talk about we have a lawsuit against USC as well
(19:35):
for defrauding us. And so we wanted to hold those
institutions accountable for their bad acts. And then the last
thing we want to do is to try to do
whatever we can to prevent this from happening to anyone else.
The seven year nightmare we've lived, no one else should
have to live through that. And so we want to
bring attention to this kind of abuse and how our
system can be weaponized for personal gain or political gain
(19:56):
in ways that most people can't even imagine.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
So one to do a weekend helps stop from happening
to anyone else.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, I love that, and I appreciate you doing that.
Let me ask you something a little more on the
personal level, and if you don't want to answer it,
that's fine.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
We'll move on.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
But was it necessary for you, your wife, and or
your children to have therapy after this, because I can
only imagine that I would probably need something like that
because it's I mean, you feel like the whole world
is claiming that you're the big bad wolf, when in
fact you're completely innocent, and I'm sure it felt like
no one's listening.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yes, it's been very devastating. We've had some counseling, for sure.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I think as I look back on it, though, there
are three things that have really helped us get through this.
One is our faith, the second is our circle of
friends and family, which has been just fantastic. And then
I think it's our overall strength of relying on each
other and leaning on each other when we needed that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You know, my background is different than.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Most people expect or assuming this Netflix movie, and in
this case, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon.
I grew up in poverty and the projects of hard Ford, Connectic,
with a single mom and three half siblings. I don't
even know who my father is, never met my father,
don't even know who my father is, and so we
didn't grow up with privilege.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And I worked hard to try to do the right things,
and so I've been a fighter my whole life.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I picked tobacco for four years from the age of
twelve to sixteen, forty hours a week in the fields
to help my families straight by. So I know what
hard work is, I know what the value of a
dollar is. And I'm willing to fight for the truth
and fight for what's right. And so we'll fight for
our children to defend their honor. And even though this
has cost my entire life savings, it's been devastating and
all of our retirement accounts, everything's been fully depleted, We'll
(21:40):
continue to fight to clear their names and do what
they can. And I think from a mental health perspective,
as traumatizing as this is, I think in the long run,
it'll make.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Them stronger, just like the hardships I had to endure
as a child.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
If there's any silver lining, and it's something I would
never wish on anyone, it is that overcoming will make
you stronger in the long run, and I hope that
that would be the.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Case for my children.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, I actually actually was thinking about that too. I
love that you could lean on your faith and your
friends and especially each other, because it just strengthens the
bonds of your family, but to make sure that the
kids are resilient so that you know when the day
comes that you're not here, they can still stand strong
and fight those things because you instilled this in them. Now,
(22:25):
I think that is really, really probably one of the
most valuable things to come out of this. That and
the empathy that you can now have and the testimony
for other people who may experience something in their own
way that's similar.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, it hasn't been amazing. The experience I've had has
been very eye opening.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
I can only imagine how many innocent people are behind
bars because they didn't have the resources to fight, or
the willpower or the support network to fight. And that
conviction rate is it's just a crushing machine. And the
way the government can come Mathew relentlessly again and again,
and they's still come after us to this day, and
I worry about retaliation. They're so vindictive at every step
in this process, where they're sharing pictures of my teenage
(23:07):
girls or preteen girls in bathing suits, to the prison
experience upfront, to just how they devastate you financially.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
They fought us for five years.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Through the appeals court process here every step of the
way when they knew the truth. And so this process
is devastating, and most people don't have the resources or
the willpower.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
And my heart goes up to them.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
How many people are sitting thousands of thousand people are
sitting behind bars having done nothing wrong but maybe get
in the wrong place at the wrong time, or serve
some multerior motive for an aggressive prosecutor. And that's something
that should scare every American.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, definitely. And I say here and I question, why
in the world would they continue to fight you on that,
especially because at this point, I mean, you're just defending yourself.
You're not going after them. It's not you know what
I'm saying. You're just trying to defend yourself and your children.
Why in the world would they continue to spend tax
spare money to appeal time after time after time when
(24:03):
it's been proven that you're innocent. Meanwhile, I don't know
how much you know about the several of the different
massive school shootings that we've had, but like Yavedel, Texas
and even Virginia, the Virginia Tech shooting, those all were
found to be the government's fault, and they fought those
as well four years, you know, not wanting to pay
(24:25):
out the victims. They still have one. I think that
the one in Texas is still going on that last
I heard, not wanting to pay the victims because they
didn't do what they were supposed to do. You know,
it's kind of one of those like you know this
as a parent, you lead by example. It's okay to
mess up. Everybody messes up. When you mess up, you
just go, you know what, ah bad on me. I
(24:47):
will take full responsibility for that mess up. And you
apologize and you try to make amends. You don't just
keep fighting even though you messed up.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Right, Well, when was the last time you heard the
federal government or roscuters say they messed up? They never
do that, And to say face, I understand their drive
to double down and quadruple down.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
That's the way they operate.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
So even though they falsely accused me, and they had
every charge overturned in the appeals court except for the
they left me with a single tax conviction for deducting
my donation on the wrong line. I believe or not
that the sellony for fourteen hundred and twenty five dollars
so left me with that conviction. But at my trial,
the things they did were even more devastating.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I detail some of that in the book.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
You know, the scandal within the scandal where they were
able to handpick a judge through a jug shopping process
who was very supportive, who ruled against us ninety eight
point three percent of the time. They only let in
one point seven percent of my evidence.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Think about that.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
It didn't happen just once or twice, six hundred and
sixty times during a three week trial. They basically objected
to all of our evidence. So things like my daughters,
my twin daughters had a perfect score and a near
perfect score, that wasn't a lot to be shown to
the jury. Think how crazy is this case about college admissions.
The jury was not allowed to see my daughter's actual
(26:05):
test scores.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
They were certified. I'm totally serious. It's shocking. My lawyers
were shocked. They've never seen anything like this.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
My son certified swim time, proving it was one of
the fastest players in the country and one of the
fastest on the USC team, and it proved that singer changed.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
My son went on by eight percent. Only crazy, right,
that was not allowed into my trial.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
My own will and my own emails weren't allowed in
my own trial, my own written will, and we had
one hundred examples of us giving other families a boost
and admissions through the athletic process and other processes.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
That was not a lot of my trial.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
The trial was so outrageous that everything got overturned by
the appeals court and all the core charges, and then
even eleven former lead prosecutors wrote a support brief saying
John Wilson didn't get a fair trial.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
That never happens.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
So that's how rageous this process was, you know, and
you know during my trial, usc was also that's why
we're suing them, you know, very very dastardly. Even though
we met with the school years before. We verified with
the head coach that donatd through Singers Organization was fine.
We verified it through the development office that making a
donation would get us, you know, a tiebreaker boost for
(27:11):
a qualified kid. They said yes to all those things.
They gave me a receipt for our donation. So we
did our due diligence and they kept our money to
this day. At my trial, they falsely said, or they
they said, because it now has to be true. It's
under oath that they never gave a donor a boost
in the admissions process related to athletics or any other thing,
and that that was a bribe. I said, what, how
(27:34):
can it be a bribe? I didn't know the USC
kid give out receipts for a bribe. And yet that's
what they said at the trial. And so if that's
the truth, which they said at trial under oath, it is,
then they lied to us when we met with them
in person years before, when they told us this would
be fine to do. And you know, that's the kind
of thing that donors do and have been doing for generations.
(27:56):
You make a large donation and you've a qualified child,
you get a tiebreaker boot in the admissions process, just
like they do for people who are faculty children, who
are legacy children, or political VIPs, or families going to
afford to pay full tuition. Schools have these policies that
they've had for generations to give certain tiebreaker boosts to
many different categories, right right.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Oh my gosh, I'm just so overwhelmed by this. I
hate it. We're actually up at the end of our
time because this story is absolutely mind blowing and fascinating
all at the same time. So I'm sure that people
listening feel the same way. So why don't you tell
us where we can find your book? What it's called
all those things?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yes, the book is called Varsity Blues, the Scandal within
the Scandal, and I think your audience would be shocked
by the things that we include in that. One important
thing to note, you can buy it on Amazon or
any online retailer. But also, all the proceeds from the
book are going to charity, including a charity that's going
to fund defendants who have been falsely accused. So please
buy the book, read it, and share with your friends,
(28:59):
and know that all the proceeds you're going to go
to a charitable causes.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Well, God bless you because I figured it might be
be going to help you since you said you wiped
out your retirement and all your savings and such, so
I guess you're really leaning in on your faith heart
and I just hope that God blesses you. I'm sure
you will. But for doing all that, that is amazing.
And you said Amazon or any.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Retailer, any online retailer.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Guess okay, awesome, Well, thank you so much for your
time today, and I am so sorry this happened to you,
but I am so grateful that I get to share
your story.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Well, thank you for sharing, Rebecca.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with the Virginia News
Network and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus.
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hughes of the Virginia
News Network. Few people know that not everyone accused in
the infamous college admission bribery scandal that included celebrities like
Felicity Huffman and Laurie Laughlin was guilty. One innocent family
continues fighting to clear their reputation after being caught in
the net of the Varsity Blues scandal in twenty nineteen.
(00:29):
Those parents have written a book called Varsity Blues, The
Scandal within the Scandal, and started a charity to help
other Americans who may find themselves wrongly accused by the
federal government. Today's episode includes some of that experience shared
by author John Wilson. Welcome to the show, mister Wilson.
I'm so glad you could join us today to talk
(00:49):
about your new book.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Great, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
So why don't you start by telling us a little
bit about who you are and what prompted you to
write This.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Name was John Wilson, and I had basically lived the
American dream for most of my life, followed all the
rules and did what I thought was right and married
a wonderful woman, the love of my life, and for
thirty years we were very happy and raised our three
children and had lived the American dream. Education changed my life,
(01:21):
allowed me to escape poverty, and helped me to succeed
in a business career. And that all came crashing down
in March of twenty nineteen when I was swept up
falsely as part of the nationwide scandal called Operation Varsity Blues.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
All right, and I remember that, But why don't you
tell the audience a little bit about remind them of
what happened, and then if you'll tell us a little
bit about how you got involved in that.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Sure, at its core, the scandal was about parents who
were abusing their privilege. It included many famous celebrities like
Felicity Huffman and Laurie Laweauflin, and other wealthy parents, primarily
on the West Coast, who were confessed to cheating on tests,
bribing coaches, and creating fake profiles for their children in
(02:11):
sports that they didn't even play, all to get their
unqualified children accepted into top colleges. And I understand how
the outrage in the public sentiment was just incredible. For
this story, we didn't do any of those things. And
that's the frustrating part for me and my family. Our
children were all highly qualified on their own merits. My daughters,
(02:31):
my twin daughters, got a perfect score and a nine
to nine percentile score on the ACT. To put that
in perspective, fewer than five thousand people out of one
point eight million students worldwide to take the test get
a perfect score. My son was a highly qualified athlete.
He competed nationally and internationally in swimming and water polo
for a decade. He had a world record swimming when
(02:53):
he was younger, and he was competing on the Stanford
club team for seven years throughout middle school and high school,
and he won the national champ ships one year on
that team, and he was invited twice to the US
Olympic Development Team program. So he was a real athlete.
He joined the US team and so he was a
real athlete. He wasn't a fake athlete. And my donations
(03:13):
that I made through the Central con Man and this scheme,
Rick Singer went to USC into IRS certified charities and
I got a receipt from USC for my donations and
they've kept my money to this day. And so our
case was very, very different, and we were swept up,
as we learned over time, for one reason here, and
that was geography.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Oh Man. So it was all about where you were, yes.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
And what happened is that the con man at the
center of this scheme named Rick Singer, he ran a
legitimate business. He had a legitimate business providing tutoring and
counseling for many, many families, myself included. He had three
thousand clients. He was recommended to us by Goldman Sachs.
My advisor from Goldman Sachs, who had known for a decade,
called me up when my son was entering high school
(03:59):
and said, you ought to consider using this guy, Rick Singer.
He works with a number of our clients at Goldman,
and he has a rolodex that's pretty famous and includes
people like Steve Jobs and Joe Montana and so forth.
And so when Goldman Sachs recommends someone like that and
says that he's done a lot of work with other clients,
you assume he's been vetted. And so we trusted Singer,
(04:19):
and he did give legitimate service to us for a
number of years. He did real tutoring his company for
my son and my daughters later on, and he did
real college counseling for us, so we had no reason
to suspect. In fact, if you look at of singers
three thousand clients, only one percent wherever charged, they had
what they called wholesome accounts like we were, and dark
side accounts, and so only one percent of his accounts
(04:40):
were dark side, and his colleague said publicly that the
wholesome accounts never knew about the dark side accounts. I
didn't know he had dark side accounts. People were cheating
on tests and things like that. And so as you
looked further, as we were charged here, we tried to say,
why was I charged? My case is totally different than
all the other parents who were charged. And as it
turns out, this case was uncovered by the Boston based
(05:03):
prosecutors who found someone in Connecticut on an unrelated charge
who gave them a referral that led to Rick Singer.
And when they started pulling on that thread, they discovered
that there were a number of Hollywood celebrities and other
wealthy people on the West Coast involved in this set
of false activities. So they knew there would be high profile,
high visibility opportunities here for the media, and a lot
(05:25):
of prosecutors can look at these media opportunities as being
a once in a lifetime career boost. So they wanted
this case to stay in Boston, but they needed a
basis to justify bringing all the parents from California and
two hundred and fifty people in total back and forth
to Boston. So they had two hundred and fifty people,
including the defendants, including their lawyers, including the schools, including
(05:45):
the FBI agents, including singers organization. So they needed some
base that justify bringing those two hundred and fifty people
back and forth from California to Boston. And I was
that person. I was the only singer client out of
three thousand that lived in Massa. So they charged me
as part of this false conspiracy to help justify bringing
all the trials to Boston that could boost their careers.
(06:09):
And that's really the shameful part of this whole thing.
Despite all the overwhelming evidence that they had that we
were innocent and we were very different than everyone else,
they charged me anyway.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Wow, that is I'm almost speechless, and that's you know,
that's a big deal for me. I mean, I'm in
media that is just I can't even fathom what that
must have felt like. And I feel like and you
can tell me if you think the same thing. That
sounds like a weaponization of our courts. I mean, that's
(06:42):
just wrong.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's absolutely wrong, and it's been incredibly painful for my
entire family.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's been a seven year nightmare.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
You can imagine my family to poor children. My twin
daughters were only sixteen years old when this happened. Imagine
how they would be devastated, and how they were devastated
this and my son as well. So, you know, despite
their accomplishments and being highly qualified, to the media falsely
smear them, and they were being fed a lot of
false narrative by the prosecutor.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Was just despicable.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Here we thought these prosecutors supposed to protect innocent children,
and yet they publicly smeared them. For example, they fed
the media lies about my son. They said my son
was an alleged athlete. They knew he had a world record,
They knew his high school coach recommended him to the
USC team. They knew he was invited to the US
Olympic team twice. They knew he was invited to play
on other D one teams being recruited, and they knew
he played on the USC team, and yet they fed
(07:33):
the media the false narrative that my son was an
alleged athlete. You know, So that kind of thing is
just beyond weaponization. That's just vindictive and you know, mean
spirited and just it's unforgearable as a father to see
your children falsely attacked by government representatives.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Is one thing. To attack me as an adult.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Falsely, but to falsely accuse my children as being unqualified
is beyond words.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
That's exactly what I was just thinking. I'm also a parent,
and like you said, it's one thing to come after me,
but to come after my children, especially when you know
your twin girls were miners. I'm not sure how your
son was at the time, but I mean, they're minor
children who have done nothing to deserve this. Can you
kind of tell us what it was like like when
(08:17):
you found out that you were a part of this.
Did you find out by being served, did you find
out through the media, How did you find out and
what did that feel like?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Now?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
The experience there was also very traumatizing. I had never
been arrested or accused of crime in my life. And
so I was getting off an airplane in Houston, Texas,
going to meet a client, and two FBI agents arresting
at the airport pushed me against the wall, handcuffy and
tell me I'm under arrest for honest services fraud.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I was shocked.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
I said, what is that? What does that even mean?
I was even more surprised by their answer is that
we don't know. We never even heard of this crime before.
Oh wow, I said, how can you be a wrestled
or something you don't even know what it is? I said,
this has got to be the wrong John Wilson. There's
fifteen thousand John Wilson's in the US. And then they
confirmed my address in Massachusetts and no, you're the Massachusetts guy.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And I was just flabberg actid.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And so they proceeded to book me and take the
DNA swabs and fingerprints and profile pictures and so forth.
Then they brought me to a prison, not to a job,
to a federal prison in Houston with eight hundred and
fifty inmates. They hand him up for the prison guards there.
They shackled my ankles and handcuffed me there and I
went through that prison process. They then stripped me down,
(09:30):
hosed me down in a large common shower with a
couple of hoses. With these big power hoses, it felt
like an animal. And then they gave me a jumpsuit.
And before they put me in my cell block. My
cell block had about sixty people, including inmates from the
general population. It's like you see in the movies, a
two story cell block and the guard booth. Just before
they put me in the cell block, and one of
the guards says, what you're back in there? He says,
(09:51):
as an older white guy, they're all going to assume
that you're a pedophile.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I said, what, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
They're going to assume you're a pedophile, and they hate
pedophiles in here. And someone made to stab you with
a shift So I was totally stabbed me. I said,
I even know why I'm here. So I spent the
next two days in sheer terror, word that someone's gonna
stab me before I even knew why I was even
charged and why I was even there. Wow, that was
just day one. That's just part of the hardball tactics
(10:16):
that the government can use when they weaponize the justice
system for the wrong purpose. They wanted to intimidate me,
to get me to plead guilty immediately. But I'm a fighter.
My background is very different than what the media has
been led to believe, and so that helped me really
think about fighting and taking this on.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah. Oh my gosh. So from the time they showed
up at the airport until you're and I'm blown away
that you were taken to a prison. By the time
from from time you got you know, encountered at the
airport to the time you're in, how long did that
was it like an hour? Two hours?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
About an hour or two? About an hour or two,
And it's really fast. Two days in the prison, Yeah,
really fast, And yeah, I know it is incredibly fright.
I can be locked in my cell, I said, to
be safe. I said, no, you can't be locking yourself
until locked down at night. And if you're high yourself,
they'll think you're a real.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Bad word and.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
They'll try to f you upright, And so they said
you can't.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
You got to walk around. Just watch her back in there.
And so I was literally terrified for the next day
and a half.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
And I still didn't know why I was there. And
seems like a due process violation.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
In and of itself.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, so did you get a chance to call your wife?
I mean, surely, she was, like, where in the world
did he go?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I got one phone call.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
My wife was actually out of the country, so I
couldn't reach her, and so I reached my assistant because
she was nine time zones ahead from where we were
in Texas. And so I reached my assistant and had
her call my wife. The next day and my brother,
who was a civil attorney, who came down the next day,
met me at the prison. So they took me out
(11:42):
of the common cell block, shackled me, and handcuffed me.
I shuffled to a meeting room where I met through
a plexigass wall with my brother and a Texas criminal lawyer.
And that's the first time I learned that this was
all about some kind of college admission scandal. They told
me I was arrested with fifty other people for cheating
on tests and bribing coach and putting together fake profiles.
I said, I didn't do any of those things. They
(12:03):
must have the wrong John Wilson, I said to them again.
And that was how this started. And it just got
worse and worse from there. Over the next six plus years.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Wow. And all of this so that a prosecutor can
try to get his fifteen minutes of fame, basically is
what I'm understanding.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And they did. They got more than their fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
This case was so high profile that every time someone
was charged or plug guilty or was sentenced, they got
to milk the media to the nth degree. So these
prosecutors got millions of hits in the media for the careers,
and both the lead prosecutors found new jobs before this
trial even happened. And I can see how that is
very attractive and appealing. So they can move from one hundred,
(12:42):
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars government job to a
million dollar partner role.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
At some of these big national law firms.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
And so that temptation is very great for some of
these people, and that's how they make their careers, either
politically or get into a very large, high profile law firm.
And so that temptation I understand. But to do what
they did to me and my family is to spicable.
The things I'll share in the book, you know, the
skin within the scandal will shop most of your audience.
(13:10):
I'll give one or two examples in addition to just
the hardball tactics of arresting me and throwing me in
that prison. You know, they went through all of my emails.
They violated the scope with the search warrant. They didn't
just look at my emails with Singer. They looked at
all of our personal emails for over a decade. I
think it was one hundred and eighty thousand emails. But
it included things like family photos from vacations. So they
had pictures of my daughters and my son at twelve
(13:32):
years old wearing swimsuits, right, and they were sharing that
with two hundred and fifty lawyers on this case website,
and we begged with the judge to take that down.
They said, no, that's what you get for being accused
of this kind of crime. So they had things like
our family photos. Imagine my twin daughters, pictures of them
in swimsuits at twelve years old being shared with hundreds
(13:53):
of people.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Just creepy. Beyond being wrong, it's just creepy.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Who knows what kind of people could see those things,
And the same with my son and medical So the
things they did again and again that we share in
this book, well, I think certainly scare people and shock people.
And the worst part, from my point of view, if
they can do this to someone like me, they can.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Do to other people too.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Oh and a heartbeat and whatever happened to innocent until
proven guilty? I mean, that used to be such a
thing that was said all through my childhood by my
own family and by everyone in society around me. And
it seems like that has just been tucked away somewhere
quietly now and we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Well, I think it's been flipped on its head, frankly,
that you know right now, given their conviction rates, given
their unlimited resources and the way they can play hardball
at every step in this process, the federal prosecutors win.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Ninety nine point six percent of the time. Think about that.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Ninety nine point six percent of the time they get
a conviction either pleading because people can't afford and don't
have the resources and their will.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Power to fight, or through a trial process.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
So with that being said, I can understand where the
media and others assume you're guilty. If you're accused, there's
a ninety nine point six percent chance you're going to lose,
and so you're guilty, and I can see how that
plays itself out with the media and with others, and
especially in a high profile case where you had forty
nine other parents who played guilty and me right, and
so that set of facts alone just damned you in
(15:21):
the eyes of the media, both the streaming media, the
public media, and some of the trolls and things that
are out there. So it's just been devastating from every perspective.
But I think the government has used and abused their
system so much that now it is essentially you're guilty
until you're proven innocent in our core system.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
And even then if somebody you know, unfortunately we've seen
this even recently. You know, media can put out a
headline that is very damaging, but their retraction is going
to be on the very back page, very quietly, very small,
you know. And if they want you to believe something,
then that I will say what they want you to believe,
(16:01):
and then that retraction meets all the legal requirements of
what they have to do so that they don't get prosecuted.
I mean, is there any retribution for you with these prosecutors?
Can you sue them?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Or the prospers essentially have immunity. So that's very frustrating,
and even some of the media can do what you suggested.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
So, for example, on the first day when this came out,
I was confused with another John Wilson, same name, different
person in Massachusetts who lived in Boston, who had some
prior felony convictions for some securities fraud.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
That wasn't me.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
But the headlines in the newspaper article right on the
front page said John Wilson's are to be convicted of
some other felonies.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Well, it's not me.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
We corrected that, but as you said, it came out
a week later, page thirty four as a footnote. So
the headline in the front page is John Wilson, a
prior fellon, has a prior conviction, blah blah blah, when
it wasn't true. So that kind of stuff can be
devastating in this entire process. Perhaps the most vicious thing
that happened, though, it was Netflix coming out with a
(17:01):
documentary before my trial even happened. And so we are
actually suing Netflix, and we won the very first major hurdle,
the motion to dismiss or yeah, the motion to dismiss.
We won that and messress supirit courts. We're going to
trial and we're going through discovery now. But what Netflix
did was just devastating. They smeared me through the same
kind of tactic as the government. They basically put me
(17:21):
in a movie that they called a documentary with nine
or ten other families who all confessed through the crimes
of cheating and bribing and so forth.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
That I never confessed to.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
I never did.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
And so they put me in that movie and they.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Showed me or the person playing me, or the words
something like twenty five times in the first twenty three minutes.
So it just smeared me again and again and again
twenty five times with other people's bad acts. And so
they basically painted me as being the worst parent of
any parent in their film. And so it poisoned the
jury pool even before my trial began. Oh no, and
(17:54):
so it's just all rayed. Think about Netflix, the biggest
streamer in the world, puts out a documentary, a falsely
labeled documentary that makes people think it's true, and they
have two hundred and ninety million subscribers around the world
in one hundred and ninety countries and half a billion viewers.
So just think about that, and it's still out there today,
this movie. It never got corrected to say all my
(18:14):
core charges were overturned, or that, you know, we didn't
plead guilty like the others, and that my facts that
we gave them in advance were very different. And that's
the most damning part for them, is that we gave
them a warning letter. My lawyers gave them a letter
because they pre announced their movie with five hundred and
fifty pages of documents and facts that proved my innocence
(18:35):
that were all available on the public record. I also
voluntarily took a polygraph test with the former head of
the FBI Polygraph Division and secondarily checked by the former
head of the CIA polygraph Division worldwide. I passed all
the tests with flying colors. They had all of that
and all the evidence of the government had and they
still went ahead with their movie and it basically smeared
(18:56):
me and took things out of context so it would
sound much worse than it actually was.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
And to this day they haven't made any corrections.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Wow, I can't even imagine that. Is that what prompted
you to write this book.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I think we wrote the book for two or three reasons.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Really, my wife and I.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
One is to set the record straight right, to really
clarify that we were different. My children are qualified, and
that was really a very important thing for us to
do for the record. The second thing we want to
do was to hold some of those institutions accountable. There
are three institutions that really wronged us here. It was
the government, it was Netflix, and even USC and I'll
talk about we have a lawsuit against USC as well
(19:35):
for defrauding us. And so we wanted to hold those
institutions accountable for their bad acts. And then the last
thing we want to do is to try to do
whatever we can to prevent this from happening to anyone else.
The seven year nightmare we've lived, no one else should
have to live through that. And so we want to
bring attention to this kind of abuse and how our
system can be weaponized for personal gain or political gain
(19:56):
in ways that most people can't even imagine.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
So one to do a weekend helps stop from happening
to anyone else.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, I love that, and I appreciate you doing that.
Let me ask you something a little more on the
personal level, and if you don't want to answer it,
that's fine.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
We'll move on.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
But was it necessary for you, your wife, and or
your children to have therapy after this, because I can
only imagine that I would probably need something like that
because it's I mean, you feel like the whole world
is claiming that you're the big bad wolf, when in
fact you're completely innocent, and I'm sure it felt like
no one's listening.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yes, it's been very devastating. We've had some counseling, for sure.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I think as I look back on it, though, there
are three things that have really helped us get through this.
One is our faith, the second is our circle of
friends and family, which has been just fantastic. And then
I think it's our overall strength of relying on each
other and leaning on each other when we needed that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You know, my background is different than.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Most people expect or assuming this Netflix movie, and in
this case, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon.
I grew up in poverty and the projects of hard Ford, Connectic,
with a single mom and three half siblings. I don't
even know who my father is, never met my father,
don't even know who my father is, and so we
didn't grow up with privilege.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And I worked hard to try to do the right things,
and so I've been a fighter my whole life.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I picked tobacco for four years from the age of
twelve to sixteen, forty hours a week in the fields
to help my families straight by. So I know what
hard work is, I know what the value of a
dollar is. And I'm willing to fight for the truth
and fight for what's right. And so we'll fight for
our children to defend their honor. And even though this
has cost my entire life savings, it's been devastating and
all of our retirement accounts, everything's been fully depleted, We'll
(21:40):
continue to fight to clear their names and do what
they can. And I think from a mental health perspective,
as traumatizing as this is, I think in the long run,
it'll make.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Them stronger, just like the hardships I had to endure
as a child.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
If there's any silver lining, and it's something I would
never wish on anyone, it is that overcoming will make
you stronger in the long run, and I hope that
that would be the.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Case for my children.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, I actually actually was thinking about that too. I
love that you could lean on your faith and your
friends and especially each other, because it just strengthens the
bonds of your family, but to make sure that the
kids are resilient so that you know when the day
comes that you're not here, they can still stand strong
and fight those things because you instilled this in them. Now,
(22:25):
I think that is really, really probably one of the
most valuable things to come out of this. That and
the empathy that you can now have and the testimony
for other people who may experience something in their own
way that's similar.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, it hasn't been amazing. The experience I've had has
been very eye opening.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
I can only imagine how many innocent people are behind
bars because they didn't have the resources to fight, or
the willpower or the support network to fight. And that
conviction rate is it's just a crushing machine. And the
way the government can come Mathew relentlessly again and again,
and they's still come after us to this day, and
I worry about retaliation. They're so vindictive at every step
in this process, where they're sharing pictures of my teenage
(23:07):
girls or preteen girls in bathing suits, to the prison
experience upfront, to just how they devastate you financially.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
They fought us for five years.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Through the appeals court process here every step of the
way when they knew the truth. And so this process
is devastating, and most people don't have the resources or
the willpower.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
And my heart goes up to them.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
How many people are sitting thousands of thousand people are
sitting behind bars having done nothing wrong but maybe get
in the wrong place at the wrong time, or serve
some multerior motive for an aggressive prosecutor. And that's something
that should scare every American.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, definitely. And I say here and I question, why
in the world would they continue to fight you on that,
especially because at this point, I mean, you're just defending yourself.
You're not going after them. It's not you know what
I'm saying. You're just trying to defend yourself and your children.
Why in the world would they continue to spend tax
spare money to appeal time after time after time when
(24:03):
it's been proven that you're innocent. Meanwhile, I don't know
how much you know about the several of the different
massive school shootings that we've had, but like Yavedel, Texas
and even Virginia, the Virginia Tech shooting, those all were
found to be the government's fault, and they fought those
as well four years, you know, not wanting to pay
(24:25):
out the victims. They still have one. I think that
the one in Texas is still going on that last
I heard, not wanting to pay the victims because they
didn't do what they were supposed to do. You know,
it's kind of one of those like you know this
as a parent, you lead by example. It's okay to
mess up. Everybody messes up. When you mess up, you
just go, you know what, ah bad on me. I
(24:47):
will take full responsibility for that mess up. And you
apologize and you try to make amends. You don't just
keep fighting even though you messed up.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Right, Well, when was the last time you heard the
federal government or roscuters say they messed up? They never
do that, And to say face, I understand their drive
to double down and quadruple down.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
That's the way they operate.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
So even though they falsely accused me, and they had
every charge overturned in the appeals court except for the
they left me with a single tax conviction for deducting
my donation on the wrong line. I believe or not
that the sellony for fourteen hundred and twenty five dollars
so left me with that conviction. But at my trial,
the things they did were even more devastating.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
I detail some of that in the book.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
You know, the scandal within the scandal where they were
able to handpick a judge through a jug shopping process
who was very supportive, who ruled against us ninety eight
point three percent of the time. They only let in
one point seven percent of my evidence.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Think about that.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
It didn't happen just once or twice, six hundred and
sixty times during a three week trial. They basically objected
to all of our evidence. So things like my daughters,
my twin daughters had a perfect score and a near
perfect score, that wasn't a lot to be shown to
the jury. Think how crazy is this case about college admissions.
The jury was not allowed to see my daughter's actual
(26:05):
test scores.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
They were certified. I'm totally serious. It's shocking. My lawyers
were shocked. They've never seen anything like this.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
My son certified swim time, proving it was one of
the fastest players in the country and one of the
fastest on the USC team, and it proved that singer changed.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
My son went on by eight percent. Only crazy, right,
that was not allowed into my trial.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
My own will and my own emails weren't allowed in
my own trial, my own written will, and we had
one hundred examples of us giving other families a boost
and admissions through the athletic process and other processes.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
That was not a lot of my trial.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
The trial was so outrageous that everything got overturned by
the appeals court and all the core charges, and then
even eleven former lead prosecutors wrote a support brief saying
John Wilson didn't get a fair trial.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
That never happens.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
So that's how rageous this process was, you know, and
you know during my trial, usc was also that's why
we're suing them, you know, very very dastardly. Even though
we met with the school years before. We verified with
the head coach that donatd through Singers Organization was fine.
We verified it through the development office that making a
donation would get us, you know, a tiebreaker boost for
(27:11):
a qualified kid. They said yes to all those things.
They gave me a receipt for our donation. So we
did our due diligence and they kept our money to
this day. At my trial, they falsely said, or they
they said, because it now has to be true. It's
under oath that they never gave a donor a boost
in the admissions process related to athletics or any other thing,
and that that was a bribe. I said, what, how
(27:34):
can it be a bribe? I didn't know the USC
kid give out receipts for a bribe. And yet that's
what they said at the trial. And so if that's
the truth, which they said at trial under oath, it is,
then they lied to us when we met with them
in person years before, when they told us this would
be fine to do. And you know, that's the kind
of thing that donors do and have been doing for generations.
(27:56):
You make a large donation and you've a qualified child,
you get a tiebreaker boot in the admissions process, just
like they do for people who are faculty children, who
are legacy children, or political VIPs, or families going to
afford to pay full tuition. Schools have these policies that
they've had for generations to give certain tiebreaker boosts to
many different categories, right right.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Oh my gosh, I'm just so overwhelmed by this. I
hate it. We're actually up at the end of our
time because this story is absolutely mind blowing and fascinating
all at the same time. So I'm sure that people
listening feel the same way. So why don't you tell
us where we can find your book? What it's called
all those things?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yes, the book is called Varsity Blues, the Scandal within
the Scandal, and I think your audience would be shocked
by the things that we include in that. One important
thing to note, you can buy it on Amazon or
any online retailer. But also, all the proceeds from the
book are going to charity, including a charity that's going
to fund defendants who have been falsely accused. So please
buy the book, read it, and share with your friends,
(28:59):
and know that all the proceeds you're going to go
to a charitable causes.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Well, God bless you because I figured it might be
be going to help you since you said you wiped
out your retirement and all your savings and such, so
I guess you're really leaning in on your faith heart
and I just hope that God blesses you. I'm sure
you will. But for doing all that, that is amazing.
And you said Amazon or any.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Retailer, any online retailer.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Guess okay, awesome, Well, thank you so much for your
time today, and I am so sorry this happened to you,
but I am so grateful that I get to share
your story.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Well, thank you for sharing, Rebecca.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with the Virginia News
Network and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus.
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