Nine-month federal prison term (the longest yet) given to former CEO who paid nearly $1 million to benefit four kids in college admission scandal

As reported in this Los Angeles Times piece, "Douglas Hodge, once the leader of an international bond manager and now an admitted felon, was ordered Friday to spend nine months in federal prison for paying bribes totaling $850,000 to get four of his children into USC and Georgetown as fake athletic recruits."  Here is more about the latest sentencing in Operation Varsity Blues:

Hodge, 62, received the longest prison term of any of the 14 parents who have so far been sentenced for fraud and money laundering crimes they admittedly committed with William “Rick” Singer, a Newport Beach college admissions consultant who has acknowledged defrauding some of the country’s most selective universities for years with rigged exams, fake athletic credentials and bribes.  In addition to his prison term, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton ordered Hodge to pay a $750,000 fine, serve 500 hours of community service and remain on supervised release for two years.

“I know that I unfairly, and ultimately illegally, tipped the scales in favor of my children over others, over the hopes and dreams of other parents, who had the same aspirations for their children as I did for mine,” Hodge said in a statement. “To those children, and their parents, I can only express my deepest and sincerest regret.”

From the day he surrendered to authorities last March, Hodge, a resident of Laguna Beach, was among the highest-profile names in a scandal headlined with them. He rose to the head of Pimco, the bond management company based in Newport Beach, before retiring from the post of chief executive in 2016.

Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston had asked Gorton to send Hodge to prison for two years. In a memo filed before his sentencing, they criticized Hodge as a hypocrite, appearing to the world the image of success and integrity while leading “a secret double life, using bribery and fraud to fuel a mirage of success and accomplishment.”

Hodge’s lawyers said the request for a two-year prison term reflected the Boston prosecutors’ “single-minded obsession” with obtaining undeservedly lengthy sentences in the high-profile case. Gorton handed down in November what was previously the longest sentence in the case, a six-month term, to Toby Macfarlane. The Del Mar title insurance executive is incarcerated in Tucson scheduled to be released in June, according to Bureau of Prison records.

Hodge pleaded guilty in October to conspiring to commit fraud and money laundering. Along with three other parents, he reversed his not-guilty plea after prosecutors warned of a new indictment carrying a bribery charge.

Eleven parents — a group that includes the actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, J. Mossimo Giannulli — balked at the threat, maintained their not-guilty pleas and were indicted on a bribery charge. Fifteen parents have pleaded not guilty; 21 have admitted their guilt or said they plan to do so...

Justin D. O’Connell, an assistant U.S. attorney in Boston, said Hodge did more than look away from Singer’s scheme. Hodge, he wrote in a memo, “engaged in the scheme more often, and over a longer period of time, than any of the defendants charged to date.” After his daughter was admitted to Georgetown, Hodge repeated the scam at the school for his oldest son and at USC for two more children, spending $850,000 in all. In arguing for a two-year sentence, O’Connell pointed to what he said was Hodge’s willingness to bring his children into his crimes.

He told his daughter to “stay under the radar,” and not tell a Georgetown interviewer that she had already been admitted through tennis, O’Connell wrote. Hodge vehemently disputed this. “The government simply has the facts wrong on this,” he said. His lawyers said he took “great steps” to hide from his children the scheme to transform them into elite athletes on paper, and that prosecutors have no evidence they were aware of, let alone complicit in, the fraud.

Prior related Varsity Blues posts:

• Mapping out next possible celebrity sentencings in wake of indictment in college admissions scandal 
• Big batch of federal plea deals (with relatively low sentencing ranges) in college admissions scandal
• Summer sentencing (with notable particulars) for first college admission scandal parents to enter pleas in court
• Federal district judge rejects feds request for significant prison term in first sentencing of college bribery scandal
• Gearing up for the federal sentencing of Felicity Huffman and others involved in college bribery scandal 
• Feds recommending incarceration terms from 1 to 15 months for parents involved college bribery scandal 
• Noticing the interesting (but perhaps not too consequential) guidelines "loss" issue lurking in the college bribery cases
• Gearing up for the next round of sentencings in college admissions scandal
• Next parent sentenced in college admission scandal gets four months in federal prison
• Next parent up in college admission scandal sentencing also gets four months in federal prison
• BigLaw partner gets one month federal time as latest parent sentenced in college admissions scandal 
• Napa Valley winemaker gets five months of imprisonment, the longest sentence so far in college admissions scandal
• US Attorney in college admission scandal makes plain how trial penalty works even for celebrity actresses
• Catching up with another round of sentencings in "Operation Varsity Blues"
• The trial penalty on fine display as parents in college admissions scandal get hit with new federal bribery charges
• Reviewing the sentencing dynamics as more parents get (minimal) prison time in "Operation Varsity Blues" college admissions scandal 
• Longest prison sentence (six months) imposed in college admission scandal on big-spending dad