Mother gets 7 months for college scam
Bribe paid to get daughter into Georgetown
BOSTON — A California woman was sentenced Tuesday to seven months in prison for paying bribes to rig her two daughters’ college admissions exams and get one of them into Georgetown University as a fake tennis recruit.
In an unusual hearing held via videoconference due to the coronavirus pandemic, the judge rejected Elizabeth Henriquez’s bid to avoid prison because of the public health crisis but is allowing her to remain free until at least June 30 in the hopes that the outbreak will have diminished by then.
“I have every hope that the coronavirus crisis will abate in a matter of months and that Ms. Henriquez will be able to serve her sentence safely and rebuild her life,” U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton said.
Henriquez and her husband were charged with paying $400,000 US in bribes to get their oldest daughter into Georgetown as a bogus tennis recruit in 2016. They also paid bribes to have someone cheat on their daughters’ college entrance exams, authorities said.
In one instance, the purported proctor sat next to her daughter while she took a test and fed her the answers and then “gloated” with Henriquez and the teen about how they had cheated and gotten away with it, authorities said.
“This was a long-term scheme where fraud replaced truth in the admissions process for both of her kids,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Rosen said.
Her husband, Manuel Henriquez, is the founder and former CEO of Hercules Capital, a finance firm in Palo Alto, California. He is scheduled to be sentenced April 8.
Her lawyers had urged the judge to give her home confinement, citing a memo written by Attorney General William Barr who said some nonviolent inmates who are particularly at risk to the virus may be safer at home.
“I feel so ashamed and I promise to spend the rest of my life trying to repair the harm caused by my immoral actions,” Henriquez told the judge.
Prosecutors had argued that she deserved more than two years behind bars.