An admissions scandal parent got probation. His argument? Not rich or famous.
In a case known for Hollywood celebrities and powerful business executives, Peter Jan Sartorio was different, his lawyer argued. The founder of a natural food company, he was neither rich nor famous, the lawyer said. When he was arrested on charges that he had paid $15,000 to cheat on his daughter’s ACT exam, he quickly told the court that he would plead guilty. And unlike some of the nearly three dozen parents swept up in the nation’s largest admissions prosecution, Sartorio issued no statements or news releases, his lawyer said, because “he doesn’t have a public image to maintain.”
When the time came for Sartorio, a father from Menlo Park, California, to be sentenced Friday, he indeed stood out, becoming the first parent sentenced in the case to avoid prison time.
The judge, Indira Talwani of U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, sentenced Sartorio to a year of probation, and ordered him to perform 250 hours of community service and pay a fine of $9,500. It was the lightest sentence yet given to a parent, including the 14 days of incarceration given to actress Felicity Huffman, who committed essentially the same crime — paying a corrupt college consultant to cheat on her daughter’s SAT exam.
Sentences in the case have ranged from Huffman’s two weeks to five months for a parent who conspired both to cheat on the SAT and to bribe college athletic officials to designate his daughter as a recruit in a sport she was not qualified to play. All of the sentences, though, have been less than what prosecutors sought. In the cases of Huffman and Sartorio, prosecutors asked for sentences of one month in prison.
On Friday, Sartorio’s lawyer, Peter K. Levitt, argued that Sartorio should get a lighter sentence than Huffman because he was not as famous or privileged. Any wish to send a message about how even celebrities are held accountable for crimes, his lawyer said, was irrelevant in Sartorio’s case.
But the judge took pains to say that was not her reasoning for a period of probation.
Instead, it was a quirk of Sartorio’s case that made the judge see him as less culpable than Huffman. He had paid the college consultant at the center of the admissions scheme in cash, withdrawing the money from two different bank accounts in three separate transactions over the course of several days. Huffman, like the other parents who have pleaded guilty in the testing scheme, paid for the cheating by making a purported donation to a foundation set up by the consultant, William Singer, which claimed to help underprivileged children.
Prosecutors had cast this distinction as potentially worse for Sartorio because it showed him trying to avoid detection, but Talwani viewed it differently.
Yes, the judge said, it showed that Sartorio was aware that what he was doing was wrong. But, she said, that was preferable to other parents who, by writing a check to an ostensible charity, attempted to obfuscate, even to themselves, what they were doing.
“Some people thought about it and realized it was wrong and went forward, and some people couldn’t be bothered to think about whether it was wrong or right,” she said.
“He is the only one in front of me,” the judge said, “who didn’t try to convince himself, let alone his tax accountant, let alone the U.S. government, that what he was doing was legitimate.”
But Talwani rejected the idea that she was sentencing Sartorio more lightly because he was less wealthy than some of the other defendants.
“I am not here to punish rich people more than poor people — that’s not my job,” she said. “And to the extent this has been interpreted as, the richer you are, the worse you’re going to do, that is not the framework, and that is not the framework that I intended to convey.”
Sartorio was clearly pleased after he left the courtroom. “I’m happy with him,” he said, smiling and pointing at Levitt, before adding that he was “still shaking.”
Sartorio and Huffman each pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.
Prosecutors have not expressed disappointment with the sentences, though they have continued to ask for sentences longer than the judge has given out, despite criticism from her that they are ignoring the legal decisions she has already made and the need for consistency.
In a recent television interview, the U.S. attorney from Massachusetts, Andrew Lelling, said his office was happy with the 14 days that Huffman received.
“We thought the one month was proportional,” he said, referring to the amount of incarceration his office had asked for. “I think the two weeks that she actually got was also reasonable. We were happy with that. I think it was a thoughtful sentence.”
