Menlo Park mother gets prison time in college fraud
A Menlo Park jewelry entrepreneur received a threeweek prison sentence Wednesday in federal court in Boston after she pleaded guilty to lying about her son’s ethnicity and bribing a test taker to boost his college entrance exam score in connection to the “Varsity Blues” admissions scandal.
Marjorie Klapper, 50, pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honestservices mail fraud. She acknowledged her role in paying $15,000 to improve her son’s entrance exam as well as falsely claiming he was black or Latino.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts said that Klapper became the ninth parent to be sentenced in the case. She was also sentenced to one year of supervised release, ordered to complete 250 hours of community service and fined $9,500.
Klapper faced up to 20 years in federal prison. Federal prosecutors had recommended a sentence of four months in prison, one year of supervised release and a fine of $20,000.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling criticized the sentence as insufficient, saying she “not only corrupted the standardized testing system, but also specifically victimized the real minority applicants already fighting for admission to elite schools.”
Klapper started conspiring in 2017 with William “Rick” Singer to have her son’s ACT exam “corrected,” according to federal prosecutors. She arranged for her son to take the exam with extended time at a West Hollywood test center that Singer controlled through a corrupt administrator.
A coconspirator changed answers after Klapper’s son completed the test on Oct. 28, 2017. He scored 30 out of 36 on the exam.
Klapper also conspired with Singer to falsify her son’s applications by stating he was of African American and of Hispanic/Latino origin. Prosecutors said she also changed applications to falsely state neither she nor her husband had attended college.
Klapper then made a $15,000 purported donation in November 2017 to Singer’s fake charity.
More than a dozen parents have pleaded guilty to the same charges, including several from the Bay Area, in the widereaching admissions scandal.
The first parent to be sentenced, actress Felicity Huffman, reported Tuesday to a federal facility in Dublin. She was sentenced to 14 days behind bars, 250 hours of community service and a year of supervised release, and she was fined $30,000. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Matthias Gafni contributed to this
story.