The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Court filings ask leniency for Caplan
GREENWICH — Greenwich lawyer Gordon Caplan was the kind of person who liked to help others, his friends and colleagues say.
He coached flag football. He helped a 12yearold Iranian girl with a congenital eye disorder get into the country for surgery after President Donald Trump introduced a travel ban. He started a scholarship fund at Fordham Law Center. He assisted a budding surgeon in getting her career off the ground.
Those endorsements and more, contained in redacted and unredacted letters, comprise a 175page document that his defense team filed with Judge Indira Talwani before his sentencing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Boston.
Prosecutors are recommending eight months behind bars for Caplan, former cochairman of the Manhattan firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Caplan has pleaded guilty to honest services mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud for paying $75,000 to improve his daughter’s score on a college admissions test. He also faces a fine of $40,000 and a year of supervised release when he is sentenced for his part in the college admissions cheating scandal.
The court filing includes letters from Greenwich Police Lt. James Bonney, retired Detective Stanley Ouimette and Greenwichbased psychologist Mary Bolger, as well as the Dean of Fordham Law Center, a professor at Cornell University, and many family and friends.
Bonney, an officer since 1990, met Caplan eight years ago, when the lawyer was coaching his own son and Bonney’s daughter in flag football. Bonney and Caplan became neighbors in 2014.
“Gordon was an excellent coach and struck me as a very kind and caring man,” Bonney said.
As an officer who takes dangerous criminals off the streets in Greenwich, Bonney said he realizes Caplan broke the law, but pointed out that it was a nonviolent offense meant to help his daughter.
“I feel that Gordon is an honorable man,” Bonney said. “In this instance, he let his devotion to his family override his common sense. He did it for his child, not himself.”
His arrest in March, the impending revocation of his law license, the prosecutors’ demands for prison time, and the media frenzy over the Varsity Blues scandal have taken a tremendous toll on Caplan and his family. Bonney urged Talwani to consider leniency in Caplan’s case.
“If Gordon goes to jail, his children will be scarred for life and his son will be devastated,” Bonney said. “Without his law license, he will lose his ability to support his family. Gordon is a good man who deserves a second chance. I hope you see it in your heart to spare Gordon and his family.”
Bonney was not the only Caplan supporter with a tie to the Greenwich police. Ouimette, who began working for the Caplan family after his retirement, said he has witnessed Caplan’s devotion to his family and said he has made him feel like a family member rather than a worker.
In his letter, Ouimette said he has had several conversations with Caplan about his family over the last eight years and called him a “very compassionate and caring person” as well as a good parent.
Since the arrest, Ouimette said he had seen Caplan’s life “crumble around him” — leaving him unable to work and maintain a normal life in the community due to media attention. He urged the judge to “look past the charge and at the man before you,” who he said was an honorable person and someone who had taken responsibility and shown heartfelt remorse because of the harm he caused to others, including his daughter.
“I understand that Gordon has broken the law,” Ouimette said. “I also know that it was a violent offense and Gordon’s intent was never to harm anyone. Gordon was only trying to assist his daughter who was overstressed with the testing process. In a brief moment in his honorable life, he made bad choices with his hear and devotion to his daughter instead of using his head.”
In his letter, Matthew Diller, dean of Fordham Law School, Caplan’s alma mater, told how Caplan helped Fahimeh Kashkooli, an Iranian student in Fordham’s LL.M. program, get her 12yearold daughter Alma, suffering from a rare congenital disorder, into the country for surgery. Despite her valid visa, she was barred from entry because a travel ban had just gone into effect.
“Gordon ... immediately volunteered his help and that of his law firm, which then engaged Ms. Kashkooli as a client,” he said. “Gordon and a contingent of Fordham Law students met at the airport, where she was reunited with her mother.”