(Bloomberg) — Media executive Elisabeth Kimmel was sentenced to six weeks in jail and a $250,000 fine in the U.S. college admissions scandal, and another parent agreed to plead guilty, as the massive case winds down.
Kimmel, of La Jolla, California, was sentenced in federal court in Boston on Thursday, the same day warehouse and shipping executive I-Hsin “Joey” Chen agreed to change his plea rather than face trial, almost three years after the sprawling prosecution was announced.
Kimmel, the former chief executive officer of a California-based media company, was the 32nd parent to admit guilt in the case, which the U.S. says is the largest college admissions case the Justice Department has ever brought. She pleaded guilty in August to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, just weeks before she was to go on trial with three other parents in Boston.
Prosecutors said she had agreed to pay at least $275,000 in bribes to get her daughter into Georgetown University as a purported tennis recruit and $250,000 to get her son into the University of Southern California as a pole vaulter. She was also notable for arguing that her case should be thrown out because she’d be risking her life if she took the witness stand.
Read More: College Scam Prosecutor Targeted Parents After ‘Raging Debate’
Chen was among the original defendants in the case, in which prosecutors charged a growing number of figures from Hollywood to high finance. The U.S. alleged a conspiracy in which parents paid an admissions strategist to get their kids into elite schools by falsifying their entrance exam scores, faking their resumes as star athletes, or both.
Chen agreed on Thursday to plead guilty to wire fraud. Under the terms of his plea agreement, he will serve nine weeks in jail and pay a $75,000 fine for scheming to defraud a testing company of its exams and scores and of its right to the honest services of test administrators.
Two other fathers were convicted in October after a three-week trial, while 33 other parents have pleaded guilty and three more face trial next year.
The case is U.S. v. Colburn et al., 19-cr-10080, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).
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