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Neither Mr. Singer nor the two fathers took the witness stand. Mr. Kelly said Mr. Singer was evading cross-examination, and referred to “the empty chair” that he said Mr. Singer should be sitting in.

“Don’t let Rick Singer, the empty chair, fool you, too,” he told the jury.

At the end of the trial, out of the jury’s earshot, Mr. Kendall told the judge that the government had not made clear “who is the victim” in the case. He asked whether it was the admissions subcommittee at U.S.C., which ruled on athletic recruits.

For Harvard and Stanford, where Mr. Wilson made payments to Mr. Singer’s foundation, not to anyone at the schools, how was the transaction “disrupting or defrauding or creating any problem,” he asked the judge. “There’s no there there.”

After his son was admitted to U.S.C. as a water polo recruit, Mr. Wilson wrote in a March 2014 email to Mr. Singer: “Thanks again for making this happen! Pls give me the invoice. What are the options for the payment?” He asked if Mr. Singer could make it “for consulting or whatever,” so that “I can pay it from the corporate account?”

The prosecution argued that the arrangement was an illegal quid pro quo and that it did not matter that some of the money actually did go to U.S.C.

“Singer’s pitch was that the money would go to the program in exchange for the bogus recruitment,” one prosecutor, Stephen Frank, told the jury in his closing arguments. “It’s still a quid pro quo, wherever the money goes.”