Lori Loughlin’s Terrible, Awful Prospects in College Admissions Scandal

Lori Loughlin faces forty years in prison for her part in the college admissions scandal, and after the sentencing of Felicity Huffman Friday, she should be extremely worried. Obviously, she won’t get forty years but when she decided to fight the charges, the Feds slapped additional charges on her and her husband. Huffman, on the other hand, owned up to her guilt from the beginning.

THE CONSPIRACY AND THE UNREPENTANT PARENTS

Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli bribed officials to get both their daughters into The University of Southern California. The bribes totaled $500,000 disguised as a charitable donation for disadvantaged youth.

They were among a large group of parents who paid up to $6 million to get their children into good colleges.

When the announcement of the sting was made by the Feds, it was made very dramatically and an emphasis was put on the ‘privilege’ these parents exhibited.

Giannulli and Loughlin used bribes to facilitate Isabella’s admission to USC by having her pose as a recruited crew coxswain, though she had never participated in the sport. As part of the scheme, Giannulli submitted a photo of Isabella on a rowing machine, the court document said.

Giannulli and Loughlin repeated the scheme for Olivia, the court document said.

Loughlin and Giannulli were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest-services mail fraud, and they were among several parents later charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.

THE FIRST SENTENCE

Actress Felicity Huffman, who was also caught up in the scam, contributed $15,000 to get her daughter’s SAT score falsified.

Huffman was the first parent to be sentenced. On Friday, she received a 14-day prison sentence, was fined $30,000, ordered to do 250 hours of community service and will be on supervised release for a year.

Meanwhile, her crime was the least offensive of all the parents and she was contrite from day one. She apologized and said she was “ashamed” at her sentencing.

Loughlin and her husband have taken a different approach and decided to fight it. They were then slapped with additional charges.

IF PAST IS PROLOGUE, THEY’RE GETTING SIGNIFICANT JAIL TIME

At Law & Crime, Bob Bianchi, esq., compares the cases with that of an executive with WFG who faced charges similar to those of Huffman:

[Toby] MacFarlane, a former senior executive at WFG National Title Insurance Company, admitted to paying $450,000 in bribes. Specifically, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud — nominally the same charges as the ones Huffman pleaded guilty to, but yet the government recommended 15 months in prison, a year of supervised release, plus a fine of $95,000, restitution and forfeiture, due to the level of offense. MacFarlane admitted that he committed conspiracy to commit fraud by “getting my children into USC as recruited athletes when in fact they’re not.”

For more perspective, you can compare what the government recommended in the MacFarlane case to what was recommended in the Huffman case (and the fate of Loughlin and Giannulli).

Loughlin and Giannulli made their situation far worse by not owning up to what they had done and throwing themselves on the mercy of the court.

They are people of ‘privilege’ and there will be no mercy for them in this climate with their poor attitude. They are the elite who thought they could get away with it.

Now college officials should do something about legacy and affirmative action placements and go back to admissions based on merit.

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