Former Stanford sailing coach says case against him was ‘rigged’

On March 12, 2019, John Vandemoer anxiously sat before a judge in a Boston courthouse, about to plead guilty for his role in the largest college admissions scandal ever prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The former longtime head coach of Stanford University’s sailing team had been charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy for accepting more than $700,000 in donations to the sailing team in exchange for designating two applicants as recruits despite their lack of experience in the sport. The judge needed to hear whether Vandemoer knew that he had broken the law at the time of his actions. Part of pleading guilty, his lawyer explained, was recognition of intent.

Vandemoer paused before answering “yes” as part of his plea deal, thinking to himself: “Isn’t this lying under oath?”

In a recent interview with the Palo Alto Weekly, Vandemoer said he accepts that he will be a felon for the rest of his life but doesn’t believe he’s guilty of any crimes. In September, he released a memoir that proclaims his innocence right on the cover: “Rigged Justice: How the College Admissions Scandal Ruined an Innocent Man’s Life.”

In the book, Vandemoer recounts the events, from the day he first met William “Rick” Singer, the admitted ringleader behind the admissions scandal, to the moments that ultimately led to his conviction.

It’s the story he wished he could have told the judge that day when he entered his guilty plea. He hopes, at the very least, that his memoir serves as a lesson to other coaches and to Stanford University, as well.

“I want it to be a cautionary tale for all my fellow coaches,” Vandemoer, 44, said.

Vandemoer is among more than 50 people — including parents, admissions staff and coaches at universities across the country — who have been charged in the bribery scheme dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. From 2011 to 2018, parents paid bribes totaling $25 million to get their children admitted to top universities. The scam also included a sham charity organization, falsified athletic profiles and cheating on SAT and ACT scores, among other alleged crimes, according to prosecutors.

Immediately after Vandemoer’s charge was made public, Stanford fired him from his position as head coach. But the swift dismissal from Stanford was just one aspect of the fallout for Vandemoer. He was sentenced to one day in jail, two years of supervised release — six months of which had to be served under house arrest with electronic monitoring — and a $10,000 fine. This cost doesn’t include his legal fees. He’s still about $100,000 in debt and using proceeds from his book deal to pay it off, Vandemoer said.

Then there’s the incalculable loss of reputation. In the book, he describes how someone from his past called him an “awful person” on social media; strangers sent tirades calling him a “disgrace;” and a member of the Stanford board of trustees emailed him to ask: “How could you do this to Stanford?” Vandeomoer was immediately shunned from the larger sailing community.

He has since left Palo Alto and now lives with his family in Half Moon Bay.

How Vandemoer got involved

What Vandemoer recounts in his book paints a much different picture than what has been made public in the six-page indictment that led to his conviction.

Some of his story focuses on small details. such as how the athletics department at Stanford has notoriously bad cellphone service. This, Vandemoer explains, played a role in a call between him and Singer that was later used as incriminating evidence by the FBI.

Vandemoer also points out that the coaches at the university were responsible for fundraising after a protocol shift in 2012. He also shares that he believed he was on shaky ground with the athletics department following feedback from an annual survey that questioned his coaching abilities. Vandemoer felt intense pressure to show his worth and to raise funds for the sailing program.

“I was humiliated by the whole exercise … the idea that I had to prove myself after more than a decade there,” Vandemoer writes.

It was during this time that he received a call from Singer, who introduced himself as a college recruiter who could help Vandemoer find recruits for his team. Through Singer, Vandemoer raised $770,000 in donations for the sailing program over a two-year period.

All the book’s details contribute to the coach’s main defense: As he interacted with Singer from 2016 to 2018, Vandemoer believed he was doing his job as a struggling head coach, raising donations for his own program, and university officials were patting him on the back for doing so.

Vandemoer writes that when he handed over the first $500,000 donation made out to the university’s sailing program, Heather Owen, Stanford’s executive associate athletics director, and Bernard Muir, the athletics director, congratulated him for securing the gift.

“This is a donation from a … family through Rick Singer,” Vandemoer said.

“Oh, we know Rick. … We know Rick well,” Muir allegedly told Vandemoer.

‘I was humiliated by the whole exercise … the idea that I had to prove myself after more than a decade there.’

John Vandemoer, former head sailing coach, Stanford University

(In statements to the New York Times and The New Yorker, a university spokesperson said Muir had never met with Singer and that there was no relationship between the two men.)

Vandemoer also recounts how shortly after meeting Singer, he received a voicemail from Adam Cohen, Stanford men’s basketball assistant coach, personally vouching for Singer.

“Just want you to know I’ve worked with Rick. He’s a guy you can trust. Let me know if you want to talk about him some more,” Cohen said, according to Vandemoer.

(In an email to the San Francisco Chronicle, a Stanford spokesperson said the university did not find any evidence that the coach had vouched for Singer, and Cohen denies doing so.)

“Everything points to how Rick Singer had much more involvement in Stanford than they’re willing to let on,” Vandemoer told the Weekly.

And of the donations raised, Vandemoer never took any money for himself. He spent the funds on new boats for the team, sports team consultants and to hire a second assistant coach. In addition, none of the students aided by Singer were admitted to the university as recruited athletes through Vandemoer. (Prosecutors have confirmed, however, that one student was eventually accepted partly due to the fact that she had fabricated sailing credentials.)

Why a guilty plea?

From the start, Vandemoer has acknowledged that his defense would have been a long and difficult sell, both to a judge and to the public.

Pursuing a trial would have cost Vandemoer millions of dollars in legal fees, his lawyer Robert Fisher told him. And being charged for racketeering, something typically associated with organized crime, makes Vandemoer’s case all the more difficult to defend.

Vandemoer doesn’t omit the mistakes he made — most of them out of pure negligence, he writes — when dealing with Singer or the donations. He writes about how the last check he received from Singer was secured in an envelope. Vandemoer didn’t open the envelope before handing it to the development office. He later learned that the payment was written to “Stanford Sailing John Vandemoer.” Prosecutors used this in their case to say Singer wrote the last check directly to Vandemoer rather than Stanford’s sailing program.

Vendemoer said he’s had many conversations with his lawyer since pleading guilty.

“In those conversations he always comes back to me and says, ‘Do you regret it?’ … And every time we come to the same conclusion,” Vandemoer told the Weekly. “With the situation we were given at the time, it was really the only way forward for my family.”

Life after his conviction

Over the past two years, Vandemoer has increasingly found peace in his situation. His home is much closer to the water than his previous university-subsidized house — far from all the stress of his work as an intercollegiate coach, which during competitions took time away from his children.

He now works as a project manager at Water Solutions, which provides water engineering services. (The company’s founder, Glenn Reynolds, had a son who sailed in a program run by Vandemoer’s wife, Molly O’Bryan Vandemoer.)

He’s also still a sailing coach. At the Peninsula Youth Sailing Foundation, a Redwood City sailing school where his wife is the director, Vandemoer imparts his regatta experience to young children in the school’s Optimist or “Optis” class.

“I started off coaching Optis early on in my career,” he said. “And it’s kind of nice to go back to it.”

Stanford University has since completed a review of its admissions process and has reportedly tightened its policies on donations and athletic recruits.

On the advice of the California Attorney General’s Office, the university redistributed the $770,000 received from Singer to education programs and nonprofits in the Bay Area.

Singer is still awaiting sentencing. No hearing is scheduled at this time. He faces up to 65 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $1.25 million fine.

Vandemoer said he doesn’t think that the pitfalls in college athletics have been resolved and wonders why the universities involved in the scandal haven’t been held more culpable.

At Stanford, he said, the coaches are still responsible for fundraising.

“When it comes down to asking for funds, and it comes down to receiving funds and so on, coaches should not have any play in that because it’s not their job,” he said. “Their job is to coach the student-athletes.”