COUPLE WITH TIES TO ASPEN SENTENCED

BOSTON» A business executive and his wife, a former journalist, were each sentenced Tuesday to a month in prison for paying $125,000 to rig their daughter’s college entrance exams in a scandal involving dozens of wealthy parents.

Gregory and Marcia Abbott, of New York and Aspen, were sentenced in Boston’s federal court after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud and conspiracy. They follow five other parents who have been sentenced so far, with prison sentences ranging from 14 days to five months.

The Abbotts paid $50,000 to have a test proctor correct their daughter’s ACT exam answers in 2018, along with $75,000 to rig her SAT subject tests in math and literature, authorities said. They kept the scheme hidden from their daughter.

Prosecutors had pushed for sentences of eight months in prison and a $40,000 fine for each parent.

They said the couple planned to use the test scores to get their daughter into Duke University, where Marcia Abbott had received an English degree.