Prosecutors seek 8month term for lawyer for role in college admissions scandal
GREENWICH — Federal prosecutors are recommending that highpowered Greenwich lawyer Gordon Caplan spend eight months behind bars for paying $75,000 to improve his daughter’s score on a college admissions test.
Caplan, former cochairman of the Manhattan firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 3, seven months after his arrest by the FBI, in federal court in Boston for his participation in Operation Varsity Blues, a federal sting operation that ensnared 50 people, including parents who bribed college officials and/ or manipulated test scores to gain admission to top colleges for their children, college employees who accepted bribes and others who profited from the scheme.
Caplan is also facing a fine of $40,000 and a year of supervised release. As part of a plea bargain, Caplan was looking at a prison term of eight to 14 months for his crimes.
Actress Felicity Huffman will be the first parent to be sentenced, appearing in court this Friday. Prosecutors are recommending one month in prison for the actress, who paid $15,000 for her daughter’s scores to be changed.
In the court documents, prosecutors argue that prison time is the only meaningful sanction for the fraud committed by the parents because it alone would level a wrongdoing “predicated on wealth and rationalized by a sense of privilege.”
Prosecutors also insist that the period of incarceration be served behind bars. Home confinement would be a “penological joke,” probation with community service is “too lenient and too easily coopted for its ‘PR’ value” and a fine is “meaningless for defendants wealthy enough to commit this crime in the first place,” they argue.
The push for jail time is not, prosecutors assert, a response to the public resentment the defendants’ wealth has generated.
Caplan was looking for ways to boost his daughter’s chances of getting into a good school. At the time, she was taking online classes and playing tennis, but he envisioned her attending a topranking school.
He started working with William “Rick” Singer, who ran a business helping families during the college process, both legally and illegally. He promised he could “make scores happen” to Caplan, who requested an ACT score for his daughter that could get her into a school like Cornell University, his alma mater.
In November 2018, Caplan and his daughter flew to Los Angeles to meet a neuropsychologist who Singer assured would fraudulently diagnose her with a learning difference that would merit her extra time on the ACT. In December, they flew again to L.A. and Caplan’s daughter took the test at a center operated by a Singer coconspirator, Mark Riddell, who used the extra time allotted to correct her answers, according to court documents.