Menlo Park mother gets 3 weeks in prison
Ninth parent in nation sentenced in college admissions scandal
A Menlo Park mother was sentenced to three weeks in prison Wednesday for paying $15,000 to fraudulently inflate her son’s ACT exam score and allegedly lying about his race on applications.
The sentence for Marjorie Klapper, 50, co-owner of a jewelry business, came the same week actress Felicity Huffman became the first accused parent in the nationwide case to begin serving her two-week sentence, reporting Tuesday to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin.
Prosecutors had requested a fourmonth prison sentence for Klapper, the ninth parent sentenced in the case, on the grounds that she not only paid to fraudulently boost her son’s exam score but also arranged to misrepresent him on applications as black and Latino.
“This defendant paid $15,000 to arrange for her son to cheat on the ACT and then falsely claimed on his college applications that he was black or Latino,” U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling said Wednesday. “Ms. Klapper thereby not only corrupted the standardized testing system, but also specifically victimized the real minority applicants already fighting for admission to elite schools. We respectfully disagree that a three-week sentence is a sufficient sanction for this misconduct.”
Klapper’s lawyers disputed in their own memorandum that she had directed that her son be identified in applications as African
American and Latino. They asked for four months of home confinement, arguing that she was motivated only to help her son. who suffers from a learning disability and seizures and recently had been assaulted.
“Mrs. Klapper was motivated by her son’s legitimate and documented disadvantages that were exacerbated by a recent, violent assault,” her lawyers wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “Mrs. Klapper saw her son struggle, and she wanted him to feel like a ‘regular’ student.”
The case announced in March since has grown to 52 defendants, including 13 coaches at elite colleges including Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, USC and UCLA; two entrance exam administrators; and 35 wealthy parents.
It revolves around a Newport Beach admissions consultant, William “Rick” Singer, who also pleaded guilty to fraud charges. Prosecutors said Singer funneled parents’ payments through a sham charity to bribe test proctors and university athletic
officials. Singer has cooperated with investigators but has yet to be sentenced.
Sentences for parents who have pleaded guilty have ranged from probation for food company entrepreneur Peter Jan Sartorio, also from Menlo Park, to five months in prison for Napa Valley winemaker Agustin F. Huneeus. Several other parents, including actress Lori Loughlin, are fighting the charges.
Prosecutors said Klapper began working with Singer in 2014 to help her son prepare for the SAT exam. After her son scored 2140 out of a possible 2400 on the SAT, the test administrators accused him of cheating. In 2017, after learning Sartorio’s daughter was taking the test at a Southern California center controlled by one of Singer’s associates, Klapper arranged for her son to take the ACT there as well.
A test proctor who worked with Singer corrected the boy’s answers, and he scored 30 out of a possible 36, putting him in the 94th percentile, prosecutors said. In addition, they alleged that in November 2018, Klapper reaffirmed with Singer a plan to misrepresent her son on applications as of African
American and Latino heritage to further boost his prospects by claiming minority status.
She also discussed with Singer falsely claiming on the applications that she and her husband had not attended college to make her son seem more disadvantaged, prosecutors alleged. But then she changed her mind out of concern that her son might benefit from legacy consideration.
“She thereby increased the likelihood that her fraud would come at the expense of an actual minority candidate, or an applicant who was actually the first in his or her family to attend college,” prosecutors alleged.
Klapper’s lawyers suggested that Singer or his associates inserted the false claims about her son’s racial background in applications without her knowledge. They also noted that those false claims weren’t used on all applications: Her son’s San Diego State University application claimed he was both African American and Latino; his application to the University of Oregon listed him as Jewish.