Ex-Pimco Chief Sentenced to Prison

The former chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Company has been sentenced in the Varsity Blues case.  

Douglas Hodge, who led the fixed-income giant until 2016, is set to spend nine months in prison “for paying $850,000 to secure his children’s admission to college,” according to a Friday tweet from the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts.

Hodge was one of many high-profile parents the U.S. government in March 2019 of paying bribes to facilitate their children’s college admissions.  

A report from the Wall Street Journalshows that Hodge will have to pay a $750,000 fine, two years of supervised release, and 500 hours of community service.

Sentencing documents state that Hodge paid a purported charity, which then funneled payments to athletic coaches and administrators. Those coaches and administrators then allegedly designated his children as athletic recruits.  

That memorandum claimed that Hodge’s children falsely said they had played in United States Tennis Association tournaments and on the Japanese national soccer team, and got into colleges.

Hodge pled guilty to the charges in October, seven months after initially being charged.  

[II Deep Dive: Henriquez, Hodge to Plead Guilty in College Bribery Case] 

Hodge’s attorneys had asked for a lighter punishment.

“The first major flaw in the government’s sentencing memorandum is that the government’s recommended sentence for Doug is not based on his own conduct in the case,” his attorneys argued in documents filed Wednesday. “Instead, the government patches together episodes involving three other defendants, none of whose conduct relates to Doug.”  

Hodge’s lawyers argued that he did not involve his children in the schemes or try to pay off a coach at Loyola Marymount University, as the government had alleged. These attorneys — Joan McPhee of Ropes & Gray and Miranda Hooker of Pepper Hamilton — did not return phone calls seeking comment Friday.