Gordon Caplan, former partner (and co-chair) at the Wilkie Farr & Gallagher law firm said in disclosing his plannedplea, “the remorse and shame that I feel is more than I can convey. I apologize not only to my family, friends, colleagues and the legal bar, but also to students everywhere who have been accepted to college through their own hard work.”
Taped phone conversations between Mr. Caplan and Rick Singer, the jogging-suited mastermind behind the national web of paid-for college admissions (and who has also entered a guilty plea), were devastating for any possible defense. Mr. Singer told Mr. Caplan, in exchange for $75,000, to have his daughter “be stupid” in a psychological evaluation in order to qualify for a learning disability that meant she could take the college entrance exam over two days at a testing center in California. Mr. Singer had a test administrator at that center on his pay roll who would then fix the test with the right answers. Mr. Singer told Mr. Caplan, “She will think that she’s really super smart, and she got lucky on a test, Does that make sense?” Mr. Caplan responded, “That does.” Well, it seemed to make sense at the time. In hindsight, it is difficult to believe that Mr. Caplan was American Lawyer’s 2018 “Dealmaker of the Year.” He missed a few loopholes on this deal for his daughter.
One nit, the Barometer has is that Mr. Caplan also said in his statements on his planned plea and apology that his daughter knew nothing about the scheme. As the Barometer reads the taped phone conversations in the criminal complaint, the then-high school junior had to participate at some level in the psychological evaluation. She may not have known about the $75,000, but she was part of using a system with testing exceptions that has left mile-wide gaps for gaming.
