He was so brilliant, prosecutors said, you could pick the score you wanted on the SAT or ACT, and he would hit it.
Mark Riddell, a 36-year-old Harvard graduate who is accused of doctoring dozens of college entrance exams for the children of wealthy families, pleaded guilty Friday to charges of fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, federal authorities in Boston said.
Even as he implicated Riddell in a widespread defrauding of the country's top universities, Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, acknowledged Riddell's mastery of the entrance exams that can make or break a college application.
Riddell didn't have any inside information. "He was just smart enough," Lelling said, "to get a near perfect score on demand or to calibrate the score."
Among the tests Riddell fixed was an SAT taken by the daughter of actress Felicity Huffman, prosecutors say. Huffman, who has agreed to plead guilty to fraud conspiracy, paid $15,000 for Riddell to correct her daughter's answers after she had finished the test.
The actress admitted her guilt Monday and said she had "betrayed" her daughter and every student who was admitted to college through their honest work. Huffman said her daughter knew nothing of the scheme.
"This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life," she said in a statement.
Until his arrest last month, Riddell worked as the director of college entrance exam preparation at IMG Academy, a prep school in Bradenton, Fla., whose alumni list boasts such elite athletes as tennis players Serena Williams, Andre Agassi and Anna Kournikova.
Riddell has agreed to forfeit $240,000. For his cooperation, prosecutors recommended he be sentenced at the low end of federal sentencing guidelines. He will be sentenced July 18.
William "Rick" Singer, the Newport Beach, Calif., college admissions consultant who masterminded the scheme, paid Riddell around $10,000 per doctored exam, prosecutors said.
Riddell had been taking and fixing tests for the children of Singer's clients since at least 2011, when he took the SAT for the older son of David Sidoo, a Vancouver businessman and former Canadian Football League player, prosecutors alleged. Sidoo has pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.
Using a fake ID that bore his face and the name of Sidoo's son, Riddell _ who was 28 at the time _ took the SAT for the boy in September 2011, prosecutors say. But because Sidoo's son had scored only 1460 out of 2400 points possible on an earlier test, Riddell was told not to aim too high, according to an indictment charging the boy's father with fraud conspiracy. Riddell scored a 1670 _ enough for Sidoo's son to be admitted to Chapman University. Several months later, Sidoo allegedly paid Riddell to take his son's graduation exams, too.
The following year, prosecutors say, Riddell took the SAT for Sidoo's younger son using another fake ID and scored a 2280 out of 2400. The boy was later admitted to the University of California, Berkeley.
Eventually, Singer dispensed with the fake IDs by bribing administrators at testing sites to turn a blind eye, prosecutors said, allowing Riddell to either take the exams for his clients' children, sit alongside them and tell them which answers to choose, or correct their answers after they had turned in their tests, according to charging documents unsealed last month.
Riddell, Singer boasted to parents, was his secret weapon.
Singer told a Connecticut lawyer, who has since admitted to paying $75,000 to rig his daughter's ACT, that Riddell could "nail a score _ he's that good," according to a transcript of the recorded call, quoted in a FBI affidavit.
"I can make scores happen," Singer told the lawyer, Gordon Caplan, according to the affidavit. "and nobody on the planet can get scores to happen."
Sidoo had so much confidence in Riddell's ability, court documents show, he called Singer to say his older son was applying to business school and would need to take the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT. He asked Singer if his son could score a 2100 on the test, which is scored between 200 and 800.
"They don't have a 2100 for the GMAT," Singer told him, according to Sidoo's indictment. "But I would do my best to get it for ya."
