If John Wilson was known for anything, it was his self-made, rags-to-riches success story and position as president of Staples International. But his story changed drastically in March of 2019 when he returned to the U.S. from a business trip.

“I remember being handcuffed and shackled — my feet and my hands — shuffling down the hallway to this interview room where my brother was behind a plexiglass wall,” Wilson told me in an interview. “I said, ‘What is this? What’s going on?’ And they said, ‘Something to do with Singer.’”

“Singer” was Rick Singer, considered the mastermind in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal. In 2019, several Hollywood notables and dozens of others were swept up in Operation Varsity Blues. The FBI accused parents, college employees, and their go-betweens in a bribery scheme to get students admitted to top colleges.

Among the parents arrested were actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. They were accused of paying people to get their kids into top universities by bribing coaches, creating fake athletic photos, and cheating on tests.

But you might not have heard John Wilson’s story. He’s the parent who drew the most charges, but fought them.

Prosecutors claimed Wilson paid $220,000 to have his son Johnny recruited as a water polo athlete at the University of Southern California. And they said he spent $1 million to unfairly get his twin daughters into Harvard and Stanford.

Wilson admits he hired Singer and donated to colleges — like millions of parents have done — to increase odds their kids will get accepted in a fiercely competitive landscape. Wilson was convinced he could prove, at trial, that his children’s admissions to prestigious colleges weren’t due to bribery. Prosecutors wanted him to plead guilty.

“I said, ‘I’m not gonna plead guilty no matter how many charges you put on me. I didn’t do anything wrong,'” he told me.

The jury chose to convict in “an unfair trial that was just outrageous,” he said. But he got a different outcome on appeal.

“On appeal, we got everything overturned except for this minor tax issue,” he said. “So all the court convictions were overturned, and the judges said, you know, this is totally unfair.”

He paid a fine for the tax charge: improperly deducting USC donations. All the charges related to getting his kids into college were thrown out.

But the fight isn’t completely over. Today, Wilson is suing Netflix over a documentary that he says smeared him and poisoned the jury pool. He notes his son’s athletic accomplishments.

“He was really a water polo player at the national level,” Wilson said. “We sent them pictures of that at a practice. And what Netflix used was a kid standing in a pool in LA in the shallow end up to his waist with a water polo ball in his hand. And then they show a photographer taking a picture and then photoshopping that onto a body of a kid in the pool. They knew that was totally false and yet they used it anyway.”

For its part, Netflix says its documentary never implied Wilson photoshopped his son’s photo; it depicted a different parent and son and was wholly accurate. A judge recently denied a Netflix motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” airs at 10 a.m. Sunday, WJLA (Channel 7) and WBFF (Channel 45).