Sports legends Joe Montana and Phil Mickelson both admitted using the firm at the center of a nationwide college bribery scandal that authorities said was used by parents to get their children into elite colleges.
Montana, 62, a Hall of Fame football player, said that he paid the Edge College & Career Network, known as The Key, which was run by William “Rick” Singer.
“Mr. Singer’s company provided nothing more than minimal consulting services to our family, like so many other families, with the college application process,” Montana said in a statement. “Fortunately our kids were able to pick from a number of schools to attend due to their hard work and their merit. Thanks.”
Mickelson, a star golfer, also issued a statement saying he’d used the firm.
Mr. Singer’s company provided nothing more than minimal consulting services to our family, like so many other families, with the college application process. Fortunately our kids were able to pick from a number of schools to attend due to their hard work and their merit.
Thanks— Joseph Montana (@JoeMontana) March 15, 2019
Our family, along with thousands of others, used Rick Singer’s company to guide us through the college admission process. We are shocked by the revelations of these events. Obviously, we were not part of this fraud, our kids would disown us if we ever tried to interfere.
— Phil Mickelson (@PhilMickelson) March 14, 2019
“Our family, along with thousands of others, used Rick Singer’s company to guide us through the college admission process,” he said. “We are shocked by the revelations of these events. Obviously, we were not part of this fraud, our kids would disown us if we ever tried to interfere.”
Neither Montana nor Mickelson were named in the indictments by federal authorities.
Singer pleaded guilty on March 12 to orchestrating the scheme, which saw parents pay money for their children to get falsified SAT and ACT exams and be designated as sports recruits despite not being involved in sports.
“Between approximately 2011 and February 2019, Singer allegedly conspired with dozens of parents, athletic coaches, a university athletics administrator, and others, to use bribery and other forms of fraud to secure the admission of students to colleges and universities including Yale University, Georgetown University, Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and Wake Forest University, among others,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.
“Also charged for their involvement in the scheme are 33 parents and 13 coaches and associates of Singer’s businesses, including two SAT and ACT test administrators.”
Prosecutors said most children were unaware of the bribes.
Actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, and CEOs Manuel Henriquez and Jane Buckingham were among the parents charged in the scheme.
Because of her alleged involvement, Loughlin was reportedly dropped from the “Fuller House” show in addition to two series she had been part of on the Hallmark Channel. Her daughters have opted not to return to the University of Southern California, the school a number of the parents bribed their kids into.
Sports coaches embroiled in the scheme included John Wandemoer, the head sailing coach at Stanford University; Rudolph Meredith, the former head soccer coach at Yale University; and Gordon Ernst, the former head tennis coach at Georgetown University.
In a call with one parent, Singer said: “Okay, so, who we are … what we do is we help the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids into school … My families want a guarantee. So, if you said to me ‘here’s our grades, here’s our scores, here’s our ability, and we want to go to X school’ and you give me one or two schools, and then I’ll go after those schools and try to get a guarantee done.”
With part of the bribes, he passed on money to the sports coaches, according to prosecutors. In many cases, parents reported the payment to The Key as charitable donations.