A Menlo Park jewelry business co-owner was sentenced in federal court in Boston today (Oct. 16) to three weeks in prison for paying $15,000 for cheating on a college entrance exam for her son.
Marjorie Klapper, 50, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who also ordered her to pay a fine of $9,500 and serve one year on supervised release and perform 250 hours of community service after completing the prison term.
Klapper pleaded guilty before Talwani in May to one count of conspiring to commit mail fraud and honest services fraud.
She admitted in the plea that she paid $15,000 to a fraudulent charity run by college consultant William Singer to have her son’s score on the ACT exam improved by a corrupt proctor in West Hollywood in 2017.
She is one of 35 parents to be charged in a nationwide college admissions cheating scheme orchestrated by Singer and is the ninth to be sentenced, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston.
Defense attorneys asked for a sentence of the one day already served when Klapper was arrested on March 12 plus four months of confinement. Prosecutors had asked for four months in prison.
Although it was not part of the charge to which Klapper pleaded guilty, Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin O’Connell alleged in an Oct. 9 sentencing brief that Klapper additionally cheated by falsely stating on some of her son’s college applications that he was of African-American and Hispanic/Latino descent and that his parents had not attended college.
“She thereby increased the likelihood that her fraud would come at the expense of an actual minority candidate, or an applicant who was actually the first in his family to attend college,” O’Connell wrote.
In response, defense attorney Jonathan McDougall of San Carlos contended in an Oct. 11 brief that Klapper “did not originate the erroneous racial and ethnic claims,” but rather, believes that Singer or one of his associates made the changes on her son’s college applications.
McDougall wrote that Klapper never directed Singer to indicate that she and her husband had no college education.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling of Boston said in a statement, “This defendant paid $15,000 to arrange for her son to cheat on the ACT and then falsely claimed on his college applications that he was black or Latino.
“Ms. Klapper thereby not only corrupted the standardized testing system, but also specifically victimized the real minority applicants already fighting for admission to elite schools. We respectfully disagree that a three-week sentence is a sufficient sanction for this misconduct,” Lelling said.
— Bay City News
I can’t say that I really like being first to comment on this particular story.
I am a long time victim of the U.S. caste system, based largely on academic completion and school ratings. I have been indigent and homeless most of my life because of this.
I used to write about this stuff. Some others did too. Here you can read some of it:
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/admissions-scandal.html (1992)
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/tax-2011.html
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/huff-elite.html
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/frb-utf8.html (note – that author
uses the term “education” instead of “academic completion”)
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/complete-clinton.html (1993)
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/economist.html (1992)
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/kilian.html (1993)
https://theconversation.com/subsidized-privilege-the-real-scandal-of-american-universities-113792 (2019)
Ms. Klapper’s attorneys did a very good job of arguing mitigation in her situation. However, notice how everyone charged is presumed guilty and it’s as if the defense attorneys have rolled back. A very light sentence is good psychology. But the judges should not have allowed the guilty pleas. What the judges should have done is tell the attorneys this – since there is going to be evidence of substantial mitigation, and the defendants will get only a light sentence if they plead guilty, then if they decide to go to trial they won’t get any worse sentences, even if they are found guilty.
But this was not possible. The federal judge Indira Talwani is a graduate of Radcliff and UC Berkeley law school. Can you imagine a judicial disqualification motion based on this?
Does anybody see this?
Admission of the few in the elite (and non-elite) schools teaches rejection of the others. It’s like turning “legitimately” admitted students and their social climbing parents into Orwellian hate groups. Including Judge Indira Talwani.
The quiet Klapper home in Menlo Park was invaded by thug federal police banging on their door at 5am shouting and screaming. Ms. Klapper’s children watched in horror amid the chaos, as Ms. Klapper was handcuffed in her pajamas as agents shouted commands and questions at her.
Who issued that warrant? The means became glorified by the ends. Or, the ends became the means. This is what we must all reject. We must find that federal judge and get her thrown off the bench.
This revised comment corrects a possible copy-and-paste error from a few minutes ago
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I can’t say that I really like being first to comment on this particular story.
I am a long time victim of the U.S. caste system, based largely on academic completion and school ratings. I have been indigent and homeless most of my life because of this.
I used to write about this stuff. Some others did too. Here you can read some of it:
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/admissions-scandal.html (1992)
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/tax-2011.html
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/huff-elite.html
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/frb-utf8.html (note – that author
uses the term “education” instead of “academic completion”)
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/complete-clinton.html (1993)
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/economist.html (1992)
http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/kilian.html (1993)
https://theconversation.com/subsidized-privilege-the-real-scandal-of-american-universities-113792 (2019)
Ms. Klapper’s attorneys did a very good job of arguing mitigation in her situation. However, notice how everyone charged is presumed guilty and it’s as if the defense attorneys have rolled back. A very light sentence is good psychology. But the judges should not have allowed the guilty pleas. What the judges should have done is tell the attorneys this – since there is going to be evidence of substantial mitigation, and the defendants will get only a light sentence if they plead guilty, then if they decide to go to trial they won’t get any worse sentences, even if they are found guilty.
But this was not possible. The federal judge Indira Talwani is a graduate of Radcliff and UC Berkeley law school. Can you imagine a judicial disqualification motion based on this?
Does anybody see this?
Admission of the few in the elite (and non-elite) schools teaches rejection of the others. It’s like turning “legitimately” admitted students and their social climbing parents into Orwellian hate groups. Including Judge Indira Talwani.
The quiet Klapper home in Menlo Park was invaded by thug federal police banging on their door at 5am shouting and screaming. Ms. Klapper’s children watched in horror amid the chaos, as Ms. Klapper was handcuffed in her pajamas as agents shouted commands and questions at her.
Who issued that warrant? The means became glorified by the ends. Or, the ends became the means. This is what we must all reject. We must find that federal judge and get her thrown off the bench.