Former top TPG executive Bill McGlashan, who admitted he paid US$50,000 to boost his son’s college entrance score, was sentenced to three months in prison,Bloomberg reports.
U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton said McGlashan was the 10th parent he has had to sentence in the case but that the crime still left him “dumbfounded and appalled.”
“Your enormous wealth, privilege and pride overwhelmed all of what you want to stand for by your words and charity and philanthropy,” Gorton told McGlashan, 57, on Wednesday. “You entered into a conspiracy to cheat your son’s way into a prestigious university by paying someone an inordinate amount of money to correct his answers on the ACT exam, thereby ensuring he would receive a high score.”
He said the Mill Valley, California, investment professional had to spend some time behind bars “to demonstrate that even the rich and famous cannot avoid the rule of law.”
Before Gorton pronounced the sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin O’Connell told him McGlashan had “lived a double life.”
“Publicly as co-founder of a social impact fund, he devoted his career to addressing inequalities through making investments that sought to bring positive change by leveling the playing field,” O’Connell said. “But privately, when no one else is looking, he did the exact opposite.”
McGlashan, who appeared before the Boston judge by video conference, was accompanied by his wife and three children, his parents and his brother-in-law, TPG Capital co-founder Bill Price. He began by saying he agreed with O’Connell’s assessment of his crimes.
“As Justin said, it’s such a conflict with the way I’ve lived my life and with what I care about, and it’s impossible to explain or justify my involvement” in the scandal, McGlashan told the judge.
“In a world where fairness is in such short supply, what I did was totally unacceptable,” he said. “If I could, I would express my apology to all the kids and their families who experienced the same stress and fear that I felt about my son but, rather than reverting to an unfair scheme, they bravely live with that fear like everybody else does.”
At the end of the hearing, McGlashan’s lawyer John Hueston asked the judge to recommend that his client serve his term at the low-security federal prison camp in Lompoc, California, so he can be near his family. Gorton ordered that McGlashan surrender to federal authorities by June 9 and pay the US$250,000 fine agreed to in his plea deal.
McGlashan was one of more than 50 people charged by federal prosecutors in Boston in 2019 in the largest college cheating case ever brought by the U.S. When he pleaded guilty in February to a single count of aiding and abetting wire fraud, McGlashan was the 30th parent to admit to a role in the national scandal.
