NEW YORK, Feb 6 ― A former senior executive at private equity firm TPG Capital has agreed to plead guilty to paying US$50,000 (RM203,289) to rig his son's college entrance exam results and participating in a vast US college admissions fraud scheme.

Bill McGlashan, the former managing partner of TPG Growth and co-founder of The Rise Fund, agreed to a three-month prison sentence and US$250,000 fine in exchange for admitting to a wire fraud charge, federal prosecutors in Boston said yesterday.

A plea hearing has yet to be scheduled.

McGlashan is one of 57 people charged in the US college admissions scandal, in which prosecutors said parents conspired with California college admissions consultant William "Rick” Singer to secure their children's college admissions fraudulently.

The parents include "Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman, who received a 14-day prison sentence, and "Full House” star Lori Loughlin, who was sentenced to two months in prison.

Singer pleaded guilty in March 2019 to facilitating cheating on college entrance exams and using bribery to secure the admission of students to colleges as fake athletic recruits.

Prosecutors said that McGlashan, 57, had agreed to plead guilty to paying Singer US$50,000 to bribe a corrupt test administrator to allow an associate to proctor his son's ACT exam and secretly correct his answers.

Prosecutors had also originally charged McGlashan in March 2019 with conspiring to pay US$250,000 in order to bribe a University of Southern California official and have his son admitted to the school as a fake football recruit.

He had denied those allegations. His decision to plead guilty to the exam-related offence will make him the 30th parent to plead guilty in the case.

His plea agreement includes a clause that will allow him to appeal a judge's earlier rejection of his argument that the test scores cannot legally constitute "property” for purposes of charging him with wire fraud.

Should he prevail, he can withdraw his plea. His lawyers had no comment. ― Reuters