You be the judge: what federal sentence for Varsity Blues college admission scandal mastermind Rick Singer?

Wednesday afternoon brings a high-profile federal sentencing in Boston federal court, and I'd be interested in predictions (and/or recommendations) as to the sentence to be given to the man behind the Varsity Blues college admission scandal.  This lengthy NPR piece provides a preview, and here are excerpts:

The mastermind of the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, Rick Singer, is set to be sentenced Wednesday in Boston for a scheme that federal prosecutors say is "staggering in its scope and breathtaking in its audacity." Prosecutors want him sentenced to six years in prison, while Singer is asking the judge to let him off with little or no prison time.

His sentencing is the capstone in the years-long investigation and prosecution of Singer and more than 50 co-conspirators, and puts the focus back on what has and has not changed since the scandal broke open in March 2019.

Singer, 62, pleaded guilty to raking in some $25 million by selling what he liked to call "a side door" into highly selective universities such as Yale, Georgetown and USC to dozens of clients, from actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin to business titans and big-shot lawyers.  "We help the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids in school," Singer bragged as he pitched one of his clients on a call recorded by the FBI. "They want guarantees. They want this thing done."

His scheme involved, for instance, bribing college coaches to take students as athletic recruits, even if they were mediocre or had never even played the sport.  Singer would just make up a totally fake resume, complete with a student's face photoshopped onto an image of a real athlete.  His menu of cheating services also included fixing students' wrong answers on their college admissions tests or having someone take the test in their place....

Of the more than 50 parents, coaches and others caught up in the scheme, more than a third were sentenced to three months or less in prison.  Roughly a quarter of the defendants got no time at all behind bars, including five people who cooperated with prosecutors.

Singer is hoping his cooperation will earn him leniency, too. "He believes he will get some time, but I don't think he believes it will be a lot of time," says Bill Blankenship, who lives next door to Singer in a mobile home park in St. Petersburg, Fla.... "I have lost everything," Singer wrote in court filings pleading for leniency. He says he's "woken up every day feeling shame, remorse and regret."

"He is already serving a life sentence of sorts," his lawyers say, "vilified by the public, and ostracized, living an isolated, lonely life," and having lost "the trust and respect of family, friends."  Despite pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to defraud the United States, Singer's lawyers have asked the court to sentence him to home confinement instead of prison.  Or if Singer must serve time, his lawyers suggest, he should get no more than six months behind bars.

The lawyers also say Singer deserves credit for his "crucial" cooperation, helping prosecutors nab his former clients. He secretly recorded hundreds of phone calls with some 30 co-conspirators, methodically and craftily getting them to incriminate themselves by acknowledging the payments and bribes they paid as the tape rolled.  His ruse was to tell them that his fake charitable foundation that he used to launder bribe money was being audited by the IRS....

"Prosecutors made a deal with the devil in this case, but they always do," says former federal Judge Nancy Gertner. What makes this case unusual is that the deal is not with low-level co-conspirators ratting out the kingpin, it's with the kingpin himself, flipping on his former clients.  "I think this is an extraordinarily difficult sentencing," Gertner says, "because on the one hand, Singer's cooperation is enormously important. And you get people to cooperate by telling them they will get a benefit in their sentencing."  On the other hand, she notes, as the kingpin who masterminded the whole scheme and used more than $15 million of his clients' bribe money for his own benefit, Singer would be considered "more culpable than anyone — his cooperation notwithstanding."

Indeed, prosecutors argue Singer is most culpable "by leaps and bounds" and his sentence must be longer than the longest one to date, which was the two-and-a-half years imposed on former Georgetown University tennis coach Gordon Ernst, who accepted nearly $3.5 million in bribes in cases of at least 22 students.

Prosecutors also argue that while Singer's cooperation was "singularly valuable," it was also "singularly problematic." After he was arrested for his con, Singer actually tried to con prosecutors, too.  At the same time he was vowing to cooperate to nab other targets, he tipped off at least six co-conspirators, warning they were under investigation and that if they got a call from him, they should assume they were being recorded and deny any wrongdoing.

It's partly why prosecutors are not recommending more of a reward for Singer's cooperation.  The six years they're calling for is just slightly below the range of 6 ½ to 8 years set by the sentencing guidelines that the court has accepted.

I will likely be on a plane when this interesting sentencing takes place, so I am not sure when I will get a chance to report on the outcome.  But I am inclined to predict that the judge here will land on a prison sentence between the recommendations of the parties, probably in the three- or four-year range.

A few of many prior posts on other defendants in college admissions scandal:

• Mapping out next possible celebrity sentencings in wake of indictment in college admissions scandal 
• Big batch of federal plea deals (with relatively low sentencing ranges) in college admissions scandal
• Federal district judge rejects feds request for significant prison term in first sentencing of college bribery scandal
• Feds recommending incarceration terms from 1 to 15 months for parents involved college bribery scandal 
• Napa Valley winemaker gets five months of imprisonment, the longest sentence so far in college admissions scandal
• Catching up with another round of sentencings in "Operation Varsity Blues"
• Reviewing the sentencing dynamics as more parents get (minimal) prison time in "Operation Varsity Blues" college admissions scandal 
• Nine-month federal prison term (the longest yet) given to former CEO who paid nearly $1 million to benefit four kids in college admission scandal 
• Felicity Huffman sentenced to 14 days in college bribery scandal 
• Via video, Lori Loughlin and her husband get agreed fixed short prison sentences in college admission scandal 
• Trial penalties lead to longest (but still not so long) sentences for two Varsity Blues defendants 
• Longest prison sentence yet in Varisity Blues case, 30 months, given to Georgetown tennis coach

UPDATE: This CNN report on the sentencing, headlined "College admissions scam mastermind sentenced to 3.5 years in federal prison," documents that my prediction was actually pretty sound.  (If only there was a fantasy sentencing league instead of the sports leagues in which my outcome predictions fare much worse.)