A Palo Alto doctor and his wife who had been fighting federal fraud charges in connection with the nationwide college admissions scandal have agreed to plead guilty, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Dr. Gregory Colburn, 63, and Amy Colburn, 61, who were scheduled for trial Jan. 13, will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts said. Plea hearings have not yet been scheduled by the court.
The Colburns are charged with defrauding The College Board by paying corrupt admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer $25,000 to have their son’s SAT exam answers fraudulently inflated. The money was used to bribe a corrupt test administrator, Igor Dvorskiy, to allow a corrupt test proctor, Mark Riddell, to secretly correct the Colburns’ son’s exam answers.
In March 2018, the Colburns’ son took the College Board’s Scholastic Aptitude Test at center in West Hollywood arranged by Singer and his associates with the purported proctor instead of at his high school in Palo Alto.
In a recorded phone call with Singer in October that year, the couple then acknowledged that he had arranged for the test cheating but that he would tell the IRS that their payments to him went toward Singer’s “foundation to help underserved kids.”
Singer, Dvorskiy and Riddell have pleaded guilty for their respective roles in the scheme.
Under the terms of the plea agreements, the Colburns agreed to sentences subject to the court approval of eight weeks in prison, one year of supervised release with 100 hours of community service and a fine of $12,500. They faced up 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 on the charges.
The Coburns will be the 36th and 37th parents in the college admissions case to either plead guilty or be convicted by a jury following trial. Other defendants who also pleaded guilty included actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, as well as many wealthy Bay Area parents like Atherton financier Manuel Henriquez.
Source: www.mercurynews.com