It may feel like the U.S. college admissions case is over, but two parents sentenced in the national scandal -- including the most severely punished of all -- are fighting to remain free amid their appeals.
Seeking to delay the start of their prison sentences, a financier and a casino executive are arguing that novel legal questions could result in the overturning of their convictions for bribing their children’s way into elite universities.
Hyannis Port Capital founder John Wilson and former Wynn Resorts executive Gamal Abdelaziz have asked to remain free on bail while the federal appeals court in Boston decides whether the college slots they paid to secure for their kids constitute “property” under U.S. fraud statutes. Otherwise, their lawyers argued in court filings Friday, the two might complete their sentences before their appeals are resolved.
Wilson was sentenced to 15 months in prison, the longest sentence in the sprawling case. The private equity executive, who filed a defamation suit against Netflix Inc. last year over a docudrama about the scandal and then dropped it, was accused of paying more than $1.2 million in bribes to get his children into schools including Stanford University and the University of Southern California as recruited athletes.
Abdelaziz, who prosecutors said paid $300,000 in bribes to get his daughter into USC as a purported basketball player, got a year behind bars.
Federal judges in Massachusetts have differed over key legal issues in the case, dubbed Varsity Blues, which snared more than 50 parents, college athletic coaches, testing staff and others.
U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton, who presided at Wilson and Abdelaziz’s trial last year, was unequivocal in his finding that admissions at USC were stolen in a nationwide scheme orchestrated by corrupt college admissions counselor William “Rick” Singer.
But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, in fashioning sentences for other defendants in the case, ruled that admission slots don’t constitute property. And U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock refused to apply the federal sentencing guidelines for commercial bribery, calling evidence of it “too speculative.”
“Judge Woodlock’s and Judge Talwani’s comments make plain that this issue is at minimum a ‘substantial’ one on which reasonable jurists can disagree,” Wilson’s lawyers said in their filing.
Another legal theory at issue in the appeals is whether payment to the victim of a crime can be considered a bribe. Judges in the district have disagreed on whether USC can be regarded as a victim when parents paid full tuition and made donations to sports programs.