(Bloomberg) -- The judge preparing to sentence the parents who pleaded guilty in the U.S. college admissions scandal said she may factor in the size of the bribes they paid.

“It may be the easiest and the fairest, and we may end up there,” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said at a hearing on Tuesday in Boston.

Talwani set up the high-stakes session, bumping a couple of sentencings that had been scheduled, to weigh the Justice Department’s argument that the colleges and testing companies caught up in the scandal suffered financial harm. The government says the 15 parents who struck plea agreements should be sentenced based on that harm.

That argument, and prosecutors’ insistence on prison time, has the U.S. at odds, in some instances, with its own Probation and Pretrial Services office. The office, which recommends sentences based on federal guidelines, has concluded that the colleges and test makers didn’t suffer any loss and that therefore each of the parents should face zero to six months in prison, regardless of the sums they paid into the college admissions racket -- the biggest the government has ever prosecuted.

The probation office’s conclusion “means that a defendant who pays a $10 million bribe will have the same offense level as a defendant who pays a $10,000 bribe,” the U.S. says.

Under questioning by Talwani on Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Rosen conceded that “it’s clearly impossible” to tailor the amount of the victims’ losses to each parent and suggested that the judge could instead use the sums of the bribes themselves as “foreseeable consequences” of the parents’ crimes. She said she might well do that.

But Rosen bridled when the judge suggested looking at the question differently.

“It seems to me the guidelines are saying what did this defendant gain,” the judge said.

“I would absolutely disagree,” Rosen responded. “It’s not a gain to the defendant personally. It’s gain from the entire offense, so we have to look at the other people involved in the case -- the co-conspirators.”

Weighing the bribe amounts as a factor in sentencing wouldn’t affect the fate of the actor Felicity Huffman, one of the most prominent parents in the scandal and the first to be sentenced, this Friday. The $15,000 fee she paid to have her daughter’s SAT score illicitly boosted was too low to bump her into a more severe sentencing-guidelines category. In addition, Rosen told the judge on Tuesday that the government wouldn’t seek restitution from Huffman.

The court needed a seating chart to handle all of the defense attorneys for wealthy parents in the case who attended the hearing. Most were seated in the jury box, transforming it into a high-priced panel of men in suits. Offered a chance to speak, none of the defense attorneys took the judge up on it.

Rosen kicked off the session by praising a probation officer he has worked with over the years.

“Her work is exemplary,” he told the court. He acknowledged the conflict between the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts, which brought the case, and the federal probation office.

“I realize some sharp elbows have been thrown in the proceedings, but I just want her to know ... and the rest to know, we certainly appreciate the hard work they put in here,” he said. “We come in peace, Your Honor.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Janelle Lawrence in New York at jlawrence62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey, Steve Stroth

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.