Entertainment
Felicity Huffman ‘tricked into college admissions scandal’ by fraudster as daughter ‘would’ve got into university anyway’
A new Netflix documentary on the college admissions scandal proposes Felicity Huffman was tricked into taking part by the main orchestrator, Rick Singer.
The Desperate Housewives star was sentenced to 14 days in jail, 250 hours of community service and one year of supervised release after pleading guilty to paying Singer to fix her daughter Sophia’s SAT scores.
The actress previously paid a $30,000 (£23,800) fine as well.
However, in Operation Varsity Blues, which launches on March 17, wire-tap phone calls and testimonies revealed she didn’t need to do it – as Sophia would have got into university all on her own.
Instead, Huffman was pressured into believing her daughter would have been lost without Singer’s help, causing her to stump up the $15,000 (£12,100) fee for him to ‘fix’ her position to get her into college.
Speaking on camera, Justin Paperny, a federal prison consultant, said: ‘From my understanding of the Felicity Huffman case, [Singer] told Felicity “well, your daughter’s scores aren’t good enough to get into this school.”
‘Turns out that was made up, that was false. Her daughter would’ve got in regardless of that.’
‘It’s identifying these pain points,’ he said of Singer’s strategy. ‘Felicity can begin to rationalise “am I a good enough mother? Have I spent too much time on my career? Don’t you want your daughter in a good school?”
‘[He was] leveraging off the weakness, the pain point.’
Since the scandal, both of Felicity’s daughters with William H Macy – Sophia, 20, and Georgia, 18, – have gone on to be accepted to new colleges.
Singer is currently free after becoming helping the FBI and IRS with their enquiries, handing over more than 50 names who used his services.
As part of his business, Singer offered high powered celebrities, CEOs and businessmen ‘side door’ college entry for their children.
To do this, the parents would give large donations to Singer’s charity for ‘underprivileged children in education’, and Singer would bribe sports coaches to pretend that the students would be of benefit to their team, faking credentials so they would be considered an asset.
This would later escalate to include faking SAT and CAT scores, paying an adjudicator to tweak the answers after they were privately taken.
Metro.co.uk has contacted Huffman’s representatives for comment.
Operation Varsity Blues: College Admissions Scandal is available now on Netflix.
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