Gordon R. Caplan, one of New York’s top lawyers, was fretting last summer that his daughter couldn’t get into his alma mater, Cornell University. He wasn’t prepared to take any chances, federal prosecutors say.
On June 15, 2018, the senior mergers attorney and co-chair of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP rang up William Singer, the founder of a corrupt college counseling and test-prep business who would later become a cooperating witness in a massive admissions-bribery case, government investigators in Boston said Tuesday in a criminal complaint.
Singer, whose California-based Edge College & Career Network LLC is at the center of the alleged scam, told Caplan that he could cheat on his daughter’s ACT or SAT admissions tests for a mere $75,000 -- just like plenty of other wealthy families with kids aiming for the Ivy League.
“Look, I’m particularly interested in working with you guys and figuring out what’s best for [my daughter],” Caplan said, according to the criminal complaint, which details the conversation intercepted on a court-authorized wiretap.
“It’s the home run of home runs,” Singer said.
“And it works?” Caplan asked.
“Every time,” he responded while laughing, according to the U.S. filing.
In hundreds of pages of detailed court filings, investigators lay out an allegedly brazen scheme for the wealthy and powerful to bribe and cheat their way into the nation’s top colleges, including Yale, Stanford, UCLA and Georgetown. In all, the government said clients paid $25 million in bribes to coaches and college administrators from 2011 to 2018.
The records provide a remarkably intimate look at the insecurities of otherwise powerful parents who are willing, it seems, to do anything to get their kids into a top college. Those accused in the indictments include a former chief executive officer of bond-giant Pimco, a managing director of private equity firm TPG and Hollywood actresses.
Caplan, for example, showed a lawyer’s attention to detail, according to court filings.