(Bloomberg) -- A California man was sentenced to six months in jail for paying $450,000 in bribes to get his two kids into the University of Southern California, claiming falsely that his 5-foot-5-inch son was a 6-foot-1 basketball recruit and that his daughter was a top-flight soccer player.
Toby MacFarlane, the 13th parent to be sentenced in a sweeping college-admissions cheating case, received the harshest penalty yet at his sentencing in Boston Wednesday. Prosecutors had asked that MacFarlane receive a year and a day behind bars.
“You need to understand the devastating nature of your crimes,” U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton told MacFarlane.
MacFarlane, of Del Mar, California, had pleaded for leniency, noting that most other parents were sentenced to one month or less in prison. Two got probation.
“I know that it was wrong to get my kids admitted to USC as recruited athletes when they were not,” MacFarlane, 56, said in a Nov. 8 letter to Gorton. “The most difficult thing to accept is the fact that I set such a bad example for my kids. I want to apologize first and foremost to them, but also to USC, to other people’s families who were applying to USC, to the prosecutor, the court and everyone else who was hurt by my actions.”
MacFarlane pleaded guilty in June to a fraud conspiracy. He admitted paying college admissions counselor Rick Singer $200,000 in 2013 to fabricate a profile for his daughter, claiming she was a “U.S. Club Soccer All American” in high school. The woman graduated in 2018 but never played for the USC team, prosecutors said.
‘Real Estate Consulting’
MacFarlane also paid $250,000 in 2016 to win admission for his son, who attended the school only briefly before withdrawing. The elder MacFarlane planned to claim that $200,000 was for “real estate consulting,” while the $50,000 payment went to “USC athletics,” prosecutors said.
Sixteen parents are fighting the charges filed by U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling, and his office is also pursuing cases against others including college coaches and test administrators.
Separately on Wednesday, Igor Dvorskiy, the head of the West Hollywood College Preparatory School who oversaw college-admission testing, pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy, saying he took almost $200,000 to allow cheating on SAT and ACT exams, prosecutors said. He’s cooperating with the government and has agreed to testify against the parents who are taking their case to trial.
Dvorskiy, 53, allowed Singer’s associate Mark Riddell to correct test answers, or in some cases take the exams, for children of parents who paid as much as $75,000, prosecutors said. Dvorskiy was paid $10,000 per test by Singer, prosecutors said.
Under the plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend Dvorskiy serve two years in prison.
The case is U.S. v. MacFarlane, 19-cr-10131, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).
To contact the reporters on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net;Janelle Lawrence in New York at jlawrence62@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Steve Stroth
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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