Lori Loughlin and designer husband indicted in college cheating scandal
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday indicted “Full House” actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, designer Mossimo Giannulli, along with 14 other parents on charges of money laundering and mail fraud.
The latest development in the sweeping college admissions cheating scandal comes one day after actress Felicity Huffman confirmed she would plead guilty to charges the actress paid $15,000 for a Harvard graduate to correct answers on her daughter's SAT, boosting her score by 400 points.
Huffman said she “will accept the consequences that stem from those actions.”
Thirteen of the 33 parents originally charged in the case have agreed to plead guilty.
Speaking to FOX Business' Susan Li on “Making Money” Tuesday, attorney Misty Marris said prosecutors had been expected to add a charge of money laundering conspiracy when handing out indictments to those individuals refusing to accept plea deals.
She says Loughlin's plea deal “most likely carried with it a significant amount of jail time based on her and her husband's large financial involvement in the conspiracy,” adding “prosecutors weren't going to hand out plea deals that didn't carry some amount of jail time.”
Loughlin and her husband are accused of conspiring with college consultant William Singer to pay $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters admitted to the University of Southern California as recruits to the women’s crew team, even though neither girl rowed.
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Based on federal guidelines, Marris says, Huffman may get off relatively lightly compared to Loughlin, because of a lesser financial involvement in the scandal, opining she may be faced with between two to 10 months behind bars. Her defense attorneys could argue for a reduced sentence.
Most of the parents in the case, including Loughlin and her husband, were originally charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Prosecutors had a limited time period to formally indict them before the complaint was dismissed.
