The man who secretly took tests in the nation's college admissions cheating scheme is a Harvard grad and counselor at a prestigious sports academy.
To pull off the largest college admissions bribery scheme in U.S history, prosecutors say a middleman working for rich and powerful parents funneled money to a private school counselor in Florida to secretly take their children's ACT and SAT exams.
"He was just a really smart guy," said Andrew Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, which is leading the prosecution in the sweeping case. "He did not have inside information about the correct answers. He was just smart enough to get a near-perfect score on demand or to calibrate the score."
Prosecutors say Riddell would typically get paid $10,000 per test, paid by William"Rick" Singer of Newport Beach, California, the suspected ringleader of the international scheme. Singer operated a sham counseling nonprofit and received more than $25 million in bribe payments since 2011 from parents looking to get their under-qualified students into elite colleges and universities, according to federal charging documents.
The academy, which is not implicated in the federal case, issued a brief statement Tuesday night on Twitter announcing Riddell's suspension. It came as the academy also appeared to remove a biographical page of Riddell from its web site.
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