By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) – A private equity firm founder who was one of the first parents to face trial on charges arising out of a vast U.S. college admissions scandal was re-sentenced on Friday to six months’ home detention after an appeals court tossed most of his conviction.
John Wilson, the founder of Hyannis Port Capital, was originally sentenced to 15 months in prison before a federal appeals court in Boston in May upended his 2021 fraud convictions for conspiring to pay bribes to secure spots for his children at top universities. His new sentence also includes 250 hours of community service.
The court held that jurors were wrongly instructed that university admissions slots constituted property under federal fraud statutes.
That ruling overturned all of his trial convictions except on a tax fraud charge for taking $220,000 in fraudulent tax write-offs in 2014 for a quid pro quo payment he made to secure his son’s admission to the University of Southern California.
Prosecutors argued that crime would justify U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin imposing a 15-month sentence once again, while defense lawyers said only probation was appropriate after Wilson’s “sweeping victory” on appeal.
A lawyer for Wilson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wilson was among dozens of people charged in 2019 in the “Operation Varsity Blues” investigation, which exposed how some wealthy parents went to extreme lengths to secure spots for their children at elite universities including Yale, Georgetown and USC.
At the center of the scheme was William “Rick” Singer, a California college admissions consultant who in 2019 admitted he facilitated cheating on college entrance exams and funneled money from parents to corrupt university coaches to secure the admission of their children as fake athletic recruits.
Singer was sentenced in January to 3-1/2 years in prison. Fifty people in total pleaded guilty, including the actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, who were among Singer’s clients.
Prosecutors said Wilson was also one of Singer’s clients and in 2014 paid $220,000 to secure the admission of his son to USC as a water polo recruit. Singer then funneled $100,000 to an account controlled by USC’s water polo coach, prosecutors said.
They said Wilson subsequently deducted the payments as purported business expenses and a charitable donation on his tax return, allowing him to avoid paying nearly $90,000 in income taxes.
He and another parent, former casino executive Gamal Aziz, in 2021 became the first Varsity Blues defendants to face trial. Aziz was convicted alongside Wilson, but the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated his conviction.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Daniel Wallis)
