Dad Blames College Con Man But Gets Jail for $400,000 Bribe

(Bloomberg) -- The latest parent to be sentenced in the U.S. college-admissions scandal is going to prison, even if the guy who ran the scam is a master manipulator.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Thursday brushed aside Stephen Semprevivo’s claim to being a victim of the racket, sentencing the Los Angeles businessman to four months behind bars for paying $400,000 to get his son into Georgetown University as a fake tennis recruit.

Semprevivo, 53, also got a fine of $100,000, two years of supervised release and 500 hours of community service. He had asked for probation. Prosecutors wanted 13 months.

Semprevivo’s lawyers argued the sales-outsourcing executive led a law-abiding life until Rick Singer, the admitted mastermind of the biggest college-admissions scam the U.S. has ever prosecuted, ambled into it. Semprevivo hired both a psychologist and a criminologist to describe to the court emotional issues they said made him prey to Singer, as well as other mitigating factors.

“For Singer, parents like Stephen Semprevivo were a perfect target,” Semprevivo’s lawyer David Kenner said in a pre-sentencing memo. His client hired Singer for “legitimate” college advice, but the consultant “became more manipulative, purposeful and focused in his exploitation,” Kenner said.

“I am fully responsible,” Semprevivo told the judge on Thursday before she pronounced his sentence. He said, “This is the first and only crime, and certainly the last crime, I will commit.”

The memo had a different emphasis. In it, Kenner said Semprevivo’s son, Adam, had “sterling” grades and test scores and had considered applying to Vanderbilt University. Instead, Singer steered him to Georgetown, only to argue later that the school was out of the boy’s reach, Semprevivo told the criminologist. It was at Georgetown that Singer had a crooked coach in place at the time, prosecutors say. The coach, Gordon Ernst, has pleaded not guilty.

“Having created a problem, Singer, according to his ‘playbook,’ proposed a solution,” that Semprevivo make a $400,000 donation to his charity that he said would benefit Georgetown’s tennis program, Kenner said.

Such arguments suggest a legal strategy starting to emerge among the parents who admitted to cheating their kids’ way into college: Blame Rick Singer. The corrupt admissions strategist, who ushered the children of wealthy clients through what he called the “side door” to elite universities, came to them highly recommended, won their trust with his confidence and connections, then played on their insecurities and ultimately wielded a Svengali-like power over them, they say.

Now, as they line up for sentencing, some parents are asking for mercy by arguing that Singer is as much to blame as they are.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristen Kearney argued that Semprevivo was hardly a patsy.

He “was no passive wallflower, or Singer’s puppet,” Kearney told the court. She said “the defendant’s audacity is breathtaking” and that he pleaded guilty “to get the benefit of an early plea and now he says he is the victim.”

Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, who has led the prosecution of the college-admissions case, called the psychologist’s report an “abuse of psychological assessment to evade personal responsibility.”

Kenner, Semprevivo’s lawyer, called the government’s suggestion that his client hadn’t accepted responsibility “disingenuous” and said he acknowledged the bribe had knocked other applicants out of the spot Semprevivo’s son got.

Still, he told the judge on Thursday, “Georgetown is not a victim of Mr. Semprevivo, in my view. It’s a victim of Gordon Ernst.”

“Rick became much more aggressive and negative,” Semprevivo, until recently chief strategy officer of Cydcor, told the criminologist he hired. “We were going down a very different road than the one I thought we were on. More than anything, I didn’t want to let Adam down. Rick said: It’s the only shot Adam had.”

The argument is a risky one, said Brad Bailey, a former federal prosecutor in Boston who isn’t involved in the case.

“These are clearly the types of arguments you’d make if you were defending the case at trial,” Bailey said, referring to the 19 parents indicted on charges including money laundering. Fifteen have pleaded guilty to a single count of fraud conspiracy. “But I can see this backfiring before a federal judge at sentencing.”

At the very first sentencing of a parent, “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman earlier this month, Talwani indicated she’s not letting parents off with probation. Even Huffman, who paid $15,000 to boost her daughter’s test scores and never participated in the elaborate bribing of coaches and doctoring of sports pictures and profiles, got two weeks.

Huffman’s lawyer had argued that Singer played on his client’s concerns about her daughter’s learning disabilities and “said he could do what he perversely described as leveling the playing field.” It didn’t keep Huffman out of jail.

“Judge Talwani has already been clear that people of wealth and means taking advantage of their status to get favorable treatment for their children doesn’t sit well with her,” Bailey said.

On Tuesday it was Devin Sloane -- who paid $250,000 to get his son into the University of Southern California as a bogus water polo recruit -- standing before Talwani. The water-services executive, like Semprevivo a 53-year-old Angeleno, had blamed Singer for luring him into the scheme, calling him “sociopathic” and “a world-class schemer and manipulator.” Sloane, too, had asked the judge for probation and community service.

Talwani gave him four months.

“Why does it matter, in terms of my sentencing,” she said, “why someone else invited him to do this crime?”

The case is U.S. v. Abbott, 19-cr-10117, 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 Boston at jlawrence62@bloomberg.net

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

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