College admissions scandal mastermind found fertile hunting grounds in wealth management world
LOS ANGELES - The wealthy couple willing to pay him millions lived in Beijing, but William "Rick" Singer needed only to go to Pasadena to find them.
Michael Wu, a financial adviser for banking behemoth Morgan Stanley, worked on the seventh floor of an office building in the city outside Los Angeles. Wu specialized in Chinese clients and spent his days helping to invest their fortunes. When a Beijing pharmaceutical magnate and his wife wanted assistance getting their daughter admitted into a top-tier American university in late 2017, Wu turned to Singer for help.
Singer, who has since admitted to running the brazen college admissions scam that federal prosecutors brought down in March with criminal charges against dozens of people, was no stranger to Morgan Stanley or other big investment firms. For years he had been peddling his college admissions consulting services to wealth management advisers, who offered Singer up as a perk to clients desperate for help improving their children's college prospects.
The Los Angeles Times reported last month that Zhao Tao, the chairman of a large Chinese drug company, and his wife
