John Wilson, the Massachusetts resident exonerated after being charged in the sweeping Varsity Blues college admissions federal fraud case, is suing Netflix for providing a “misleading account” of the family in the scandal.
Wilson, of Lynnfield, and his son, Johnny, have filed a complaint in Barnstable Superior Court alleging the entertainment company and its producers defamed them in “Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal,” a documentary released in 2021.
Federal prosecutors alleged and convicted Wilson on a charge that he paid more than $1.2 million to secure his children’s admissions to elite universities — Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and Stanford University — as athletic recruits.
But the Wilsons and their lead attorney, William Charles Tanenbaum, say none of Netflix’s depictions of the family are accurate and that the company “rushed” the production of the documentary in early 2021, “poisoning public opinion and the jury pool months before Mr. Wilson’s trial even began.”
Wilson in February 2022 was sentenced in federal court in Boston to 15 months in prison — the largest penalty leveled in the case that swept up at least 50 defendants, including Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and former “Full House” star Lori Laughlin, charged with paying for their children to attend elite schools.
Last May, the First Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Wilson’s admissions scam conviction. Months later, the prison sentencing was replaced by a year of probation involving a single tax-related charge that Wilson faced.
Wilson’s legal team is alleged to have provided Netflix a 450-plus page “written warning” before the documentary’s publication outlining the concerns the family had about the film, suggesting the company avoid “guilt-by-association or including any falsehoods.”
“Netflix willingly chose to group my highly qualified children and me into a scandal involving celebrities who, unlike me, pled guilty and acknowledged their roles in shameful actions like photoshopping images of fake athletes, cheating on tests and making bribe payments to coaches,” Wilson said in a statement.
“In the interest of justice and accountability, Netflix must pay for the deliberate and devastating harm that they’ve done to my family,” he added.
The lawsuit outlines how none of Wilson’s children were alleged to have cheated on their ACT exams and that his donations went to college foundations or IRS-approved charities, “not to any coach or college employee’s personal accounts, contrary to Netflix what depicted.”
Johnny Wilson participated on the University of Southern California’s water polo team in 2014, becoming “one of the fastest players” on the team.
“The Wilsons met with the USC coaches and development team, received receipts for their donations, and USC has kept their donations to this day – contrary to what Netflix depicted,” the complaint outlines.
Netflix has not updated the film “to indicate that Mr. Wilson was cleared of all the core charges against him, leaving viewers with the false impression that he committed fraud against USC and other colleges.”
“Given Netflix’s industry leadership position,” Tanenbaum said in a statement, “it is all the more shameful for them to have intentionally disregarded the truth about the Wilsons by perniciously depicting them as they did in their unfair, inaccurate, and mean-spirited narrative as it relates to the Wilsons.”