BOSTON — Prosecutors want Actress Lori Loughlin to spend two months in jail and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, to spend five months in jail, according to a sentencing memo filed Monday in federal court.
The couple agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud in a plea agreement filed in Boston’s federal court as part of prosecution in the ongoing Varsity Blues college admissions scandal. The agreement to plead guilty came with agreements to serve the recommended sentence.
The crime Giannulli and Loughlin committed was serious. Over the course of two years, they engaged twice in Singer’s fraudulent scheme. They involved both their daughters in the fraud, directing them to pose in staged photographs for use in fake athletic profiles and instructing one daughter how to conceal the scheme from her high school counselor.
— U.S. v. Loughlin, Giannuli, et. al.
Under the plea agreement, Loughlin has agreed to serve two months in prison and Giannulli has agreed to serve five months. The plea deal must be approved by the judge.
As between the defendants, the evidence suggests that Giannulli was the more active participant in the scheme. He engaged more frequently with Singer, directed the bribe payments to USC and Singer, and personally confronted his daughter’s high school counselor to prevent the scheme from being discovered, brazenly lying about his daughter’s athletic abilities.
— U.S. v. Loughlin, Giannuli, et. al
[Lori Loughlin, husband, agree to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in college admissions scheme]
“The government respectfully requests that the Court impose the agreed-upon dispositions: a term of imprisonment of five months, a $250,000 fine, and 250 hours of community service for Giannulli; and a term of imprisonment of two months, a $150,000 fine, and 100 hours of community service for Loughlin,” federal prosecutors wrote in the memo.
Loughlin took a less active role, but was nonetheless fully complicit, eagerly enlisting Singer a second time for her younger daughter, and coaching her daughter not to “say too much” to her high school’s legitimate college counselor, lest he catch on to their fraud.
— U.S. v. Loughlin, Giannuli, et. al.
Prosecutors agreed to dismiss charges of money laundering and federal programs bribery that were added after the case was filed.
Loughlin and Giannulli previously pleaded not guilty and firmly insisted on their innocence even as other parents reached deals with prosecutors. The couple are the 23rd and 24th parents to plead guilty in the case.
The couple is accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters into the University of Southern California as crew team recruits, even though neither of them played the sport.
The pair are scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, Aug. 21, in an online hearing.
[ Judge refuses to dismiss charges against Loughlin, Giannulli ]
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