Prosecutors had sought eight months for the Abbotts, who asked for zero time in prison. Their sentences will be staggered so they aren't incarcerated simultaneously.

Greg Abbott is the founder of International Dispensing Corp., which makes shelf-stable containers for milk and other beverages. Marcia is a former fashion editor at Family Circle and daughter of a New York state senator. Their daughter Helena has sung for the Metropolitan Opera but suffers from Lyme disease and took classes online because she couldn’t attend high school.

That meant standardized test results were key to getting her admitted to Duke, where Marcia had graduated from, cum laude. But Helena scored so low on the PSAT that a significant increase on her SAT would have raised questions.

Through a friend, the Abbotts met Rick Singer, the ringleader of the college-admissions cheating scam, who assured them he could solve the family’s problems by cooking up a high ACT score for Helena. It didn't take long for the Abbotts to realize that working with Singer involved cheating. They did it anyway.

“I should have walked away, but by then I saw him as a lifeline, and was afraid of what might happen to my daughter if I backed out,” Marcia said in a letter to the judge. Greg wrote, "Our marriage was dysfunctional and full of vitriol to the point of paralysis. Shame on us for not rising above it for the sake of the daughter we both believe in and adore.”

Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano also wrote to the judge in support of his longtime friend Greg Abbott. “There is a thread that runs through Greg's life and personality and character. It is the thread of innocence,” Napolitano wrote.

Prosecutors said the Abbotts are the only family charged in the admissions scandal to pursue the exam-cheating scheme more than once.

“For the Abbotts, cheating was an acceptable and desirable way to get their daughter into Duke University. They readily paid $125,000 for the fraud and were careful to use ‘charitable’ funds to gain a tax benefit in the process,” the prosecutors wrote. “Prison is the only answer for such entitlement and criminality.”

Two days before Helena took the ACT, Greg sent $50,000 from his family foundation to a sham charity controlled by Singer, who used some of the money to bribe a corrupt test administrator and the proctor who corrected Helena’s answers. She scored 35 out of a possible 36.

The parents repeated the process for Helena’s SAT II subject tests.

“And what would be, the donation be? Because the other one was, what, $50,000?” Marcia asked Singer during a wiretapped phone call.

“It was, I think it was 50. It will be at least 75,” Singer replied.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Marcia said.

After the College Board was slow to release Helena’s purported SAT scores, Marcia called and threatened to sue.

“Mother is extremely adamant,” a call-center employee wrote. “They [sic] filing a Legal Complaint. She is Soloist in Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The student has a chance to be offered scholarship award but she must apply early and the score is only missing on that application. They want to know reason for the scores being delayed and be contacted as soon as possible.”

In his letter to the judge pleading for mercy, Greg Abbott said he was writing straight from his heart, without any outside assistance.

“Despite the several ‘consultants’ who solicited me insisting I needed them, the following words are totally my own,” he wrote, “as they should be.”