ADVERTISEMENT

Parent Who Turned Himself In Over College Scam Gets 2 Months

Parent Who Turned Himself in Over College Scam Gets 2 Months

(Bloomberg) -- California surfing entrepreneur Jeffrey Bizzack, who turned himself in after most of the parents in the U.S. college admissions scandal were charged, was sentenced to two months in prison for paying $250,000 to get his son into the University of Southern California through bribery and deceit.

Bizzack, 59, told a federal judge in Boston on Wednesday that his son was blameless.

Parent Who Turned Himself In Over College Scam Gets 2 Months

“I spent my life guiding him, protecting and teaching him, and all of this led to a reckless act,” he said before receiving his term. Bizzack is in therapy, he said, and “really trying to understand what the future is going to be. I want to make sure I’m not the man ... who made those terrible decisions.”

U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock also sentenced him to pay a $250,000 fine and do 300 hours of community service, “hands on, with the underprivileged.”

“You spend $250,000 to cheat, the fine is $250,000 for cheating exposed,” he said.

Before declaring the sentence, Woodlock grilled prosecutors, who had recommended nine months. He called the parents’ deeds in the scandal a crime of “sneaky conspicuous consumption -- the kind of thing rich people can do that poor people can’t because they have the money to do it, to obtain a good that impresses their friends.”

“Do I think this is a serious crime? You bet I think this is serious crime,” the judge said. Still, he added, “this is what seems to me a good man” whose “moral compass was demagnetized” for a time but who then “came forward and dealt directly with people who needed information.”

In a filing, Bizzack’s lawyers had asked for probation instead of prison. In court on Wednesday, once the judge said prison was necessary as a general deterrent, they sought one month.

Bizzack, a former executive of the World Surf League and business associate of surfing champion Kelly Slater, turned himself in after prosecutors announced charges against the initial 33 parents swept up in the biggest such sting the Justice Department has ever executed. A 35th parent was arrested in Spain last month.

Learning he was under investigation, he admitted his role in the scam and pleaded guilty in June to the same fraud conspiracy charge leveled at the other parents who pleaded guilty. He was the 12th to be sentenced, after another federal judge, Indira Talwani, sent all but one of the first 11 to prison in sentences ranging from two weeks to five months. One parent got a year’s probation.

The racket’s mastermind, Rick Singer, has pleaded guilty and cooperated with the government. None of the colleges or students in the scandal have been accused of wrongdoing.

In the sentencing recommendation they filed with the court, prosecutors said they had made a mistake in crafting plea agreements for the other 11 parents. Talwani concluded that the size of the bribes shouldn’t drive the punishments and that the convicted parents should face a sentencing range of zero to six months. The U.S. used a different federal sentencing guideline for Bizzack.

But in court, the judge sided with Talwani, saying the amounts of the bribes were “meaningless because of all the various unknowns and estimates and speculations involved.”

He hammered away on the bribes. The U.S. says Donna Heinel, a former USC athletics administrator who has pleaded not guilty in the case, took tens of thousands of dollars a month. In return, they say, she presented Bizzack’s son to an admissions subcommittee as a nationally ranked volleyball recruit even though he never played the sport competitively.

“Where does it say the defendant is aware that $20,000 each month was going to be paid to Donna Heinel?” Woodlock asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristen Kearney.

Kearney acknowleged there was no such evidence.

Singer secretly recorded conversations with his clients for prosecutors. If he was caught, Bizzack predicted last year during a phone call with Singer, “the worst case scenario” would be a perjury charge, the U.S. said. At the end of the call, Bizzack said he planned “to just keep my head down,” according to prosecutors.

Defense attorneys had argued Bizzack should receive probation because he immediately came forward and admitted to his crime after learning he was under scrutiny. He’d already resigned from his company and from board positions at other companies, they said.

“Mr. Bizzack has taken extraordinary, early and continuous steps to take responsibility for his conduct -- actions that speak louder than words,” his attorneys said in a court filing. He met with investigators for both the government and USC, they said, and “talked openly and honestly,” revealing everything he knew about the scheme.

Woodlock acknowleged that but said, “It’s not overly compelling he did the right thing.”

The case is U.S. v. Bizzack, 19-cr-10222, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).

To contact the reporters on this story: Janelle Lawrence in Boston at jlawrence62@bloomberg.net;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

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.