The
former Stanford University sailing coach sentenced in the Varsity Blues college
admissions scandal tells the riveting true story of how he was drawn
unwittingly into a web of deceit in this eye-opening memoir that offers a
damning portrait of modern college administration and the ways in which justice
and fairness do not always intersect.
For
eleven years, John Vandemoer ran the prestigious Stanford University sailing
program in which he coached Olympians and All-Americans. Though the hours were
long and the program struggled for funding, sailing gave Vandemoer’s life shape
and meaning.
But early
one morning, everything came crashing down when Vandemoer, still in his
pajamas, opened the door to find FBI and IRS agents on his doorstep. He quickly
learned that a recruiter named Rick Singer had used him as a stooge in a
sophisticated scheme designed to take advantage of college coaches and play to
the endless appetite for university fundraising—and wealthy parents looking for
an edge for their college-bound children.
Vandemoer
was summarily fired, kicked out of campus housing, his children booted from
campus daycare. The next year of his life was a Kafkaesque hellscape, and
though he was an innocent man who never received a dime was the first person to
be convicted in what became known as the Varsity Blues scandal.
A true
story that reads like a suspense novel,
Rigged Justice
lays bare how a
sophisticated scheme could take advantage of college coaches and university
money—and how one family became collateral damage in a large government
investigation that dominated national headlines.