John Wilson, a businessman and the one Massachusetts resident charged within the sweeping “Varsity Blues” school admissions federal fraud case, had his jail sentence yanked and changed by a yr of probation after he was sentenced on a single tax-related cost.
“After almost five years of being falsely accused and then wrongly convicted, my family and I are relieved to see our nightmare end. I have spent years defending my innocence and the reputations of my children. Today, it’s clear to all that I was telling the truth, I did not violate any laws or school policies,” Wilson, of Lynnfield, stated in a press release shared Friday with media shops.
“While I may have been the one on trial, my children were the true victims of this prosecutorial overreach. Contrary to the false narrative put forward by prosecutors and repeated in the media, my children were extraordinary students and athletes who worked hard for everything they earned,” he added.
Wilson in February of final yr was sentenced in federal courtroom in Boston to fifteen months in jail — the most important penalty leveled within the case that swept up no less than 50 defendants, together with Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and former Full House star Lori Laughlin, charged with paying for his or her youngsters to attend elite colleges.
In addition to the jail time, Wilson, a private-equity investor and former senior Staples govt, was ordered to 2 years of supervised launch, 400 hours of group service, a positive of $200,000 and to pay $88,546 in restitution to the IRS.
Federal prosecutors alleged, and convicted him on, the cost that Wilson paid greater than $1.2 million to safe his youngsters’s admissions to elite universities — Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and Stanford University — as athletic recruits.
But in May, his enchantment to the First Circuit received out and nearly all of the convictions have been dropped. On Friday he was sentenced to only a yr of probation, a positive and group service for a tax-related cost that his legal professionals described in a memo as “a technical dispute over whether and when it is appropriate to deduct a donation to an IRS approved non-profit where the donor expects to receive an unquantifiable benefit in exchange.”
His attorneys, via a Friday assertion, stated that prosecutors went onerous at Wilson “because the Boston-based prosecutors saw an opportunity to use the sole Massachusetts resident in their initial indictment to further their careers,” and even included a heatmap graphic exhibiting the overwhelming majority of defendants have been primarily based in California with just a few sprinkled elsewhere, with solely Wilson primarily based within the Bay State.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”