Former Pimco Chief Executive Officer Douglas Hodge cited donations of roughly 60% of his pay over four years in asking for a lenient sentence on charges that he paid bribes to get his children into the University of Southern California and Georgetown University.
Hodge pleaded guilty in October to fraud and money-laundering charges, admitting he paid hundreds of thousands in bribes to a corrupt college admissions counselor, Georgetown’s tennis coach and others. Federal prosecutors in Boston called him one of the “most culpable” of the 36 parents charged in the college admissions scandal and recommended he be sentenced to two years in prison when he’s sentenced on Friday.
But Hodge’s lawyers argue that he deserves a lower sentence because of his remorse and long history of charitable giving, including helping to found a Cambodian orphanage. On Jan. 31, they submitted a memo along with letters from 27 friends, former colleagues and not-for-profit heads who say Hodge has given more than $30 million to educate and care for thousands of children around the world since 2007.
U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton in Boston will sentence Hodge. Defense lawyers did not specify how long Hodge’s sentence should be, but suggested in a court filing that he deserved a sentence in line with another parent, Toby MacFarlane, who got six months prison.
In the letters, Hodge’s supporters asked Gorton to weigh his crimes against the totality of a life spent “devoted to reducing human suffering.”
Sixty Percent
Hodge’s investment adviser said in one letter that Hodge gave away an average of 60% of his pay in the four years before he retired as head of asset management giant in 2017. The letter did not give a figure and Pimco does not disclose executive compensation, but a leaked 2014 document showed Hodge received a $45 million bonus in 2013, the year before he was promoted to CEO , according to his investment adviser at Hollencrest Capital Management. When he retired in 2017, he donated all of his deferred bonuses to help children in need.
“No one I know serves so tirelessly on as many non-profit boards and committees as Doug,” the investment advisor, Gregory Pellizzon of Hollencrest Capital Management, wrote. “Many people talk the talk, very very few walk the walk like Doug.”