Wealthy parents busted for their role in the nation’s largest college admissions scandal in US history must go to prison – even if it’s only for a few months, according to the Justice Department. The agency rejected proposals for ‘alternative punishments’ filed a week before the first sentencing.
Prosecutors asked US District Judge Indira Talwani to throw Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman behind bars for one month and order her to pay a $20,000 fine for hiring the scam’s ringleader to boost the SAT score of her daughter, according to Bloomberg. Huffman will stand in front of the judge on Friday.
Home confinement for the parents “would be a penological joke conjuring images of defendants padding around impressive homes,” and community service is “too easily co-opted for its ‘PR’ value,” according to the sentencing recommendations from the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts.
“For wrongdoing that is predicated on wealth and rationalized by a sense of privilege, incarceration is the only leveler: in prison everyone is treated the same, dressed the same, and intermingled regardless of affluence, position or fame,” prosecutors told the court in the memo. –Bloomberg
According to former New York federal prosecutor Brad Simon, federal prosecutors “got what they want,” adding “They got an early guilty plea from a high-profile celebrity, and now they’re going to claim a big victory if she gets a sentence of one month in jail or less.” Prosecutors said Huffman’s conduct was “deliberate and manifestly criminal” when she paid corrupt college counselor William “Rick” Singer to help her daughter.
Huffman’s defense attorneys stated in a filing that she is “deeply remorseful” and deserves nothing more than probation and 250 hours of community service.
Her husband, actor William H. Macy, said in a six-page letter to Talwani: “She hurt her daughters. It was the one thing she swore never to do, and she did it,” adding “It’s a great lump of pain that she carries with her night and day. It’s a pain I don’t think she will ever escape.”
“When one of her daughters needs to scream at her, she takes it in and makes no excuses. She only loves them back,” he added, closing by saying “Every good thing in my life is because of Felicity Huffman.”
In total, 34 parents were charged in the scandal, which saw parents paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their kids into elite schools, including Stanford and Yale. According to the sentencing memo, 11 of the 15 who have pleaded guilty to paying Singer in the fraud have received recommendations. While the charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, the longest any of the parents wioll serve is 15 months, according to the report. Parents who acknowledge their crime or have a clean record will serve significantly less time.
19 parents who chose not to accept plea deals were indicted on money-laundering charges and have chosen to fight in court – with some of their lawyers arguing that the US Government’s case is weak. Others have argued that they wrote checks to Singer’s charitable foundation in good faith.
Singer, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to racketeering and is cooperating with prosecutors.
As the U.S. has laid out the scheme, the Newport Beach, California, college admissions strategist took thousands of dollars from affluent clients to fix their children’s entrance exam scores. Upping the ante, the government says, he funneled through a charity he’d set up hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes for college athletic coaches to put the kids on recruiting rosters, assuring them of places in elite schools across the country, including the University of Southern California and Georgetown University. None of the colleges or students have been charged.
Some of the proposed punishments in the prosecutors’ memo are less severe than the plea agreements called for, while others are the same. The longest prison sentence the government is seeking for the 11 parents is 15 months, for Agustin Huneeus, who spent $300,000 on the racket, and Stephen Semprevivo, who spent $400,000, according to prosecutors. Their plea deals called for 21 to 27 months each. –Bloomberg
While prosecutors have insisted that the parents serve time in prison, the Probation and Pretrial Services office has advised against increasing sentences based on alleged financial harm or the size of the bribes. Judge Talwani will hold a public hearing on Tuesday to discuss.
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Well, can we get Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Brennan, Mueller, Clinton in prison FIRST?
Strzok more than likely, Clinton will never spend a day behind bars and it is doubtful for Mueller. Comey, McCabe and Brennan have a 1 in 3 chance of being charged with a crime.
Doesn’t say much for the Dept. of Just Us, does it?
if just one of these mid level people were convicted & spent 20 years in prison,it would go a helluva long way to draining the swamp–
the principals & top level aides/dept heads are practically untouchable but if the peter strozks,lisa pages,mccabes,and others at that level & below go to prison,this stuff will mostly stop–
top level people can’t function well w/o their aides who do the bulk of the work & esp the dirty work–
Damn, that’s exactly what went through my head when I read the article. All the real criminals are walking free as little birds while some stupid celebrities trying to get their stupid kids ‘educated’ are treated like mass murderers.
I’m glad to see that the Justice Department is putting its time and taxpayer funded salaries to good use. They could have been investigating, charging, and convicting the following:
corrupt politicians
corrupt businessmen
rich and powerful pedophiles
but instead they decided that giving Felicity Huffman a 1 month stay in the greybar hotel is more important. This tells me all I need to know about the priorities of the US Justice Department.
“but instead they decided that giving Felicity Huffman a 1 month stay in the greybar hotel is more important. This tells me all I need to know about the priorities of the US Justice Department.”
good comment except that it should also say “… about the priorities of the us justice dept,the us elected officials,and the us population at large.”
society gets the politicians & teenagers it deserves–
And who from the university will be joining them?
Crickets, I imagine.
The bastions of Higher (priced) Edumacation are the very entities that fomented this behavior. Each and every college/university that was a subject of this should bear the repercussions of what they hath wrought. Besides what parent doesn’t do this? This is like the Harvey Weinstein BS. To say that the casting couch is something new is disingenuous. To claim that politicians, the wealthy and other connected individuals haven’t been doing this for decades is absolute BS. You think the Kennedy boys got in to the elite schools because they were smart? You think that G.W. Bush got in due to his academic excellence? BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
If they go after Felicity Huffman, they should charge GHWB for the same thing posthumously!
in addition to the salacious nature of the “crimes”,the real reason these people were charged is that they were not in the club but they figured out how to get their kids in to it in the least compromising way–
do you not believe that if they had found a very wealthy,influential alumnus that they could not have donated a few hundred thousand to his charitable foundation & he would have gotten their kid in–
do you not believe that those women could not have banged some influential alumnus & not gotten their kid in?
it’s all corrupt,we need to cut off all federal $ to colleges–
Had they given the 1/2 million directly to the university, it would have gone a long way toward getting their kids admitted. They chose to use a middleman who place a few bribes and they got busted.
Agreed to cutting the federal $ going to colleges, as well as to anything other than enumerated powers. If these “institutions of higher learning” were responsible for student loan defaults, the number of useless degrees would decrease dramatically.
“…….you and I are not in The Big Club……..”
Miss you George.
I imagine one month in that same Federal joint in NYC that Jeff Epstein was in would be enough time.
Yeah sure, let’s make some stories up to legitimize shit-for-brains FOR PROFIT SCHOOLS.
winnie,
i’m getting worried about your mental state–
perhaps you should stand down until miles gets back from vacation–
we wouldn’t want your name going into one of those govt databases would we?
The Feds almost never lose a case. Almost never. It would amaze me if these are not convicted.
agree w/you llpoh–
fed. judges are very lenient about how fed prosecutors conduct themselves,it’s rare 4 them to lose a case–
So a rich person used there money and influence to get there kid into a good college like this is something new do you honestly think bush Jr. Was Yale material
Good thing they’re rich or they might get something more than a slap on the wrist.
So if you cheat on college admissions you HAVE to go to jail. But if you belong to the machine you can do whatever you do and the DOJ turns a blind eye? I’m not sure “liberty and justice for all” means what they think it does.
Geithner caught cheating on taxes not once but twice? – simple mistake
Corzine stealing a $billion from cattle farmers? – they knew there were risks
Holder running guns across the border? – no biggie; shit happens
Obama getting a backdoor bribe from Rezko? – eh, people make mistakes
Hillary keeping top secret material on a home email server to avoid FOIA? – she didn’t know
Comey and other FBI agents lying to Congress? – doesn’t merit prosecution
….
White celebrities trying to bypass the jewish ivy-league entrance gatekeepers “on the cheap” by bribing another jewish guy to sneak their kids into schools which are now nearly impossible for white kids to get into? – YOU CROSSED THE LINE AND WILL BE PROSECUTED!