Attorney who paid $75,000 to rig daughter’s ACT exam sentenced to 1 month in admissions scandal

The L.A. Times reports:

Already disbarred and removed from his prestigious law firm, Gordon Caplan on Thursday received a final rebuke from the legal system he once sat atop when he was sentenced to one month in prison for conspiring to rig his daughter’s college entrance exams.

Caplan, a resident of Greenwich, Conn., paid $75,000 to ensure his daughter received a score in the 97th percentile on the ACT. Her test was fixed by William “Rick” Singer, a Newport Beach consultant who has admitted rigging dozens of such exams for his wealthy clients by bribing test proctors and administrators.

Once a co-chairman of the global law firm Willkie Farr and Gallagher, Caplan, 53, was ordered incarcerated by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani over the objections of his attorneys, who had argued Caplan was so disgraced, his career so ruined and his family so wounded by his misdeeds that prison wasn’t necessary.

Talwani disagreed.


Still, the judge came down on Caplan lighter than prosecutors had wanted. They had requested eight months, pointing to Caplan’s admission in a wiretapped phone call that he “wasn’t worried about the moral issue” of cheating. They also noted how he hired a lawyer to threaten the ACT with legal action when he feared the scam was unraveling, and that a “fixation on saving his own skin” pervaded nearly every recorded conversation he had with Singer.

“That a lawyer who has reached the apex of his profession could engage in such blatant criminality reveals a staggering disdain for the law,” Eric Rosen, an assistant U.S. attorney, wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Caplan must also pay a $50,000 fine and perform 250 hours of community service, Talwani ruled. He is the fourth parent to be sentenced in the scandal. Agustin Huneeus, a Napa vintner, will appear before Talwani for sentencing on Friday. Prosecutors want him to be incarcerated for 15 months. His attorneys say two months in prison would be a fair punishment.

A prominent attorney ... going to jail.