Lawyer in College Scam Apologizes to Daughter, to Plead Guilty
Ex-Willkie Farr Lawyer Gordon Caplan Will Plead Guilty in College Case
(Bloomberg) -- The former co-chair of Willkie Farr & Gallagher -- one of the highest-profile parents nabbed in a U.S. college-admissions scandal -- will become the second to plead guilty in the case.
“I take full and sole responsibility for my conduct,” Gordon Caplan said in a statement Friday. “I want to make clear that my daughter, whom I love more than anything in the world, is a high school junior and has not yet applied to college, much less been accepted by any school. She had no knowledge whatsoever about my actions, has been devastated to learn what I did and has been hurt the most by it.”
Caplan, who has left the firm, is one of 33 parents charged in the largest college admissions scandal the U.S. has ever prosecuted. The government detailed potentially compelling evidence against him, including secretly recorded discussions, in alleging he paid to boost his daughter’s college board scores.
In one conversation with William Rick Singer, the admitted ringleader of the scheme, Caplan can be heard to say, “To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue here,” according to the criminal complaint. “I’m worried about the, if she’s caught doing that, you know, she’s finished.”
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Caplan, a graduate of Fordham Law School in New York, once headed the private-equity practice group at Willkie, with clients in takeover transactions that included Hudson’s Bay Co., the operator of Canada’s largest department store chain; Insight Venture Partners; and Pearl Therapeutics Inc.
He also played a role in Willkie’s pro bono representation of Alma Kashkooli, a 12-year-old Iranian girl who was barred by President Donald Trump’s 2017 executive order from entering the U.S for treatment of a rare genetic condition.
On Wednesday Caplan made an initial appearance in federal court in Boston at the same time as actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli. He appeared stricken and declined to comment as he left with his lawyers.
Caplan is accused of paying Singer $75,000 to have his daughter’s ACT entrance exam corrected. The FBI caught the two men discussing the logistics of the scheme in a July 2018 telephone call that was wiretapped.
Singer has pleaded guilty to charges including obstruction and racketeering conspiracy, after cooperating with the Justice Department’s yearlong investigation dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues” by recording calls with clients and wearing a wire for visits.
He assured Caplan in their conversation that lots of wealthy families were using his services. With a lawyer’s attention to detail, Caplan asked Singer to walk him through the scheme, according to court filings that appear to reflect some insecurity in otherwise powerful parents.
First, Singer told him, his daughter would “be stupid” in a psychological evaluation in order to be listed as having a learning disability so she could take the exam over two days at a special center in California. There, Singer had placed a confederate to act as a proctor and fix her test.
“She will think that she’s really super smart, and she got lucky on a test,” Singer said in the recorded phone call, according to court papers.
“Does that make sense?” he asked.
“That does,” Caplan said, according to the complaint.
Caplan said in his statement Friday that “the remorse and shame that I feel is more than I can convey. I apologize not only to my family, friends, colleagues and the legal bar, but also to students everywhere who have been accepted to college through their own hard work.”
Like other parents, Caplan is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud. On Wednesday, Peter Jan Sartorio, a packaged-food entrepreneur from Menlo Park, California, filed notice he intends to plead guilty. Sartorio is accused of paying Singer $15,000 to have his daughter’s ACT exam corrected.
Willkie Farr said in a statement Friday that Caplan’s “departure is a result of his involvement in the college admissions matter and his recent statement regarding his intent to plead to a criminal charge.”
The case is U.S. v. Abbott, 19-mj-6087, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).
--With assistance from Rebekah Mintzer.
To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey
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