Atherton financier gets six months for admissions scandal

Manuel Henriquez is 20th parent to be sentenced in scheme

An Atherton financier whose wife and older daughter were said to have gloated over her test cheating in the college admission scandal was sentenced Wednesday to six months in prison for his role in buying his daughters’ ways into elite schools through a corrupt admissions consultant.

Hercules Capital founder Manuel Henriquez’s sentence was a month more than the five months prosecutors had suggested. Henriquez also was ordered to conduct 200 hours of community service and pay a fine of $200,000.

Henriquez, 56, who since has stepped away from the Palo Alto venture capital company, was contrite in a July 21 letter to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton begging for mercy.

“I fully realize and acknowledge that what I have done was wrong, illegal, unfair, and hurtful, especially to the many honest college applicant students and parents,” Henriquez wrote. “I am ashamed of my actions of putting myself and my family over all the children and parents who played by the rules.”

Prosecutors initially urged 18 months for Henriquez, arguing he and his wife, Elizabeth, “rank among the most culpable parents charged” in the caper centered on corrupt California admission consultant William “Rick” Singer, who also has pleaded guilty to helping rich parents cheat their kids into college.

But this month, prosecutors suggested five months for Henriquez, a term they said was more in line with the seven-month sentence his wife is serving and the terms of other accused parents who pleaded guilty.

Those include recent plea bargains with Hollywood actress Lori Loughlin of “Full House” fame and her fashion-designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, in which prosecutors recommend two months in prison for her and five for him based on their individual involvement in the scheme. They are to be sentenced Aug. 21.

The longest sentence for any parent who has pleaded guilty in the wideranging case so far was nine months in prison for Douglas Hodge, the former chief executive of Pacific Investment Management Co. Prosecutors had sought 24 months for him at his February sentencing.

This week, Hodge petitioned a judge for early release, saying he was at risk of contracting the coronavirus, and complaining he’d endured nearly a month in solitary confinement, beyond what the United Nations’ regards as “torture.”

Prosecutors said beginning in 2015, the Henriquezes paid Singer nearly $50,000 for test cheating for their two daughters and $400,000 toward bribing the former Georgetown University tennis coach to admit the older girl as a player for his team.

A corrupt test proctor, who also has pleaded guilty, corrected the older daughter’s answers on her SAT exam, prosecutors said, and then during a car ride home together “gloated with Elizabeth Henriquez and her daughter, celebrating their successful fraud.” The older daughter was admitted to Georgetown.

Prosecutors said in exchange for test cheating for his younger daughter, Manuel Henriquez used his influence at Northeastern University in Boston, where he is a “prominent alumnus,” to secure admission for another Singer client. The Henriquezes’ younger daughter was admitted to Northwestern University near Chicago.

Prosecutors said their recommended sentence would recognize “the seriousness of Henriquez’s criminal conduct, while avoiding unwarranted sentencing disparities.” They noted that “Henriquez, together with his wife, engaged Singer to cheat on more college entrance exams than any other parent.”

Henriquez’s lawyers argued “his role in the offense was minor” and urged a shorter term, adding prosecutors recognized his wife’s larger role in the scheme in seeking a longer sentence for her. They said Henriquez, born in the Dominican Republic, is a success story who overcame a childhood of poverty, abuse and learning disabilities, and added he is high-risk for the coronavirus disease sweeping U.S. prisons.

In his letter to the judge, Henriquez said the fallout from the scandal has been devastating for him. He said his daughters’ lives “have been uprooted and destroyed,” and with his wife in prison their marriage is “teetering on the verge of collapse.” Losing his investment company, he added, “was like losing my third child.”

“There is absolutely no excuse for what I have done,” Henriquez said. “I am deeply sorry for my sins and ask the children and parents of the other families to please forgive me.”