A federal judge in the United States on Friday sentenced the actress Lori Loughlin (New York, 56 years old) to serve two months in prison for her participation in a fraud scheme that sought to ensure her daughters admission to the University of the South of California as false athletes. The actress's husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli (California, 57 years old), was also sentenced this Friday, and will have to serve five months in prison, for participating in the same plot. Both have pleaded guilty to the fraud charges and have acknowledged that they paid half a million dollars for their daughters to pose as rowers to ensure their entry into college.
The couple are among 55 other people charged in a plot in which wealthy parents conspired with an admissions consultant to secure, through bribery and fraud, their children's admission to lower schools. Last year, consultant Willian Singer pleaded guilty to facilitating test fraud and receiving bribes to secure the admission of young people as bogus sports signings. The traps ranged from paying bribes to certain individuals to improve test scores, to having someone else impersonate the student to pass the test, to paying college sports coaches and administrators to accept students into college. their teams, even if they were not athletes and did not have the necessary merits.
Singer's company, which is now collaborating with the courts, received about $ 25 million from high-income parents who wanted their children to be admitted to prestigious universities such as Yale, Georgetown, Stanford or UCLA, according to the Massachusetts prosecution. Among the parents involved is another actress, Felicity Huffman, who was sentenced to 14 days in prison.
Loughlin, the television star known for the comedy Full House , and Giannulli initially pleaded not guilty, but the couple changed their statements last May to reach an agreement with prosecutors. "She was not stealing bread to feed her family," District Judge Nathaniel Gorton told Giannulli during her hearing, held via video conference due to COVID-19 restrictions. "He has no excuse for his crime," he sentenced.