Former Lynnfield resident John B. Wilson, who was involved, convicted, then exonerated on most of the core charges in the so-called Varsity Blues college-admissions scandal, can recoup the $1 million that he paid to admissions scheme mastermind Rick Singer, according to an order by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper.
During his trial in 2021, it was established that Wilson paid $220,000 to Singer to facilitate his son’s admission to the University of Southern California as a water polo recruit. Additionally, Wilson paid Singer $1 million to secure designated recruit statuses for his twin daughters at Stanford and Harvard in sports they had no actual involvement in. Wilson was also sentenced to 15 months in prison after jurors found him guilty of bribery and fraud charges for paying Singer to secure spots for his children to attend top universities in 2021.
However, Wilson successfully appealed the convictions, and last May, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out all convictions against Wilson, except one for falsely claiming $220,000 he made as payments to secure his son’s spot at the University of Southern California as charitable donations and business expenses in his 2014 tax returns.
Before Casper’s decision, the New England Legal Foundation (NELF) filed an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts to support Wilson, who was seeking to get the $1 million that the government continued to withhold from him.
In a statement sent to the Item by NELF, NELF said the key reasons for its support for Wilson were that Wilson’s conspiracy, bribery, and fraud convictions related to the $1 million were all overturned by the First Circuit Court, that Rick Singer was already cooperating with the government at the time the $1 million charitable donation was arranged, therefore Singer was no longer acting as a criminal conspirator, and the government’s failure to provide “direct written notice” of the seizure violates the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
