Photo Credit: Lori Loughlin/Instagram
Today in court, attended through a Zoom call, Lori Loughlin and her husband found out their fate for their role in the college admissions scandal. Loughlin was sentenced to 2 months in prison and 150 hours of community service while and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli has 5 months and 250 hours of community service through their accepted plea deal. The charges consist of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud.
The couple originally plead Not Guilty in May prior to making a plea deal.The couple is accused of paying $500,000 to Rick Singer and Key Worldwide Foundation to lie and say their daughter was on the crew team. And it wasn’t just writing it down but it was an elaborately concocted lie to include staged photos later photoshopped as evidence that she was on the team. The sentencing memo said that Giannulli, Loughlin, and Olivia Jade all worked together in the scheme but their daughter was not charged.
“In January 2018, Loughlin, Giannulli, and their younger daughter discussed how to avoid the possibility that a high school counselor would disrupt their scheme,” the sentencing memo reads. “When their daughter asked whether she should list USC as her top choice school, Loughlin allegedly replied: ‘Yes . . . . But it might be a flag for the weasel to meddle,'” referring to the high school counselor.
“Giannulli added: ‘F— him,’ and remarked that the counselor was a ‘nosey bastard,'” the memo continues. “Loughlin thereafter instructed her daughter: ‘Don’t say too much to that man.'” And of course as Murphy’s Law works, the guidance counselor told USC admissions he had “no knowledge of [her] involvement in crew, and based on what I knew of her video, blogging schedule I highly doubt she was involved in crew.” Insert daddy Giannulli who then persuaded the counselor to advise USC admissions she did in fact compete on the crew team.
Photo Credit: US Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts
“Lori and Mossimo deeply regret what they did,” a source close to Loughlin told PEOPLE in May. “This experience has taken a huge emotional and physical toll on both of them.”
Added a second source: “At this point, they just want to find out their fates and to serve whatever time they need to serve, so they can move on with their lives and close this chapter.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin O’Connell wrote in the sentencing memo that the crimes were “serious” and warranted jail time. To show you the unfairness of our justice system. Look at the homeless woman who used her babysitter’s address to register her child to school and ended up getting her kicked out of public housing and having herself arrested and charged with first degree larceny for stealing over $15,000 in taxpayer dollars for public school. That’s some type of nonsensical Soviet Union punishment right there.
O’Connell continued saying, “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.”
Who remembers when this all first started that Loughlin was facing 50 years in prison? That might be a little extreme but it certainly deserved more than 2 months when people have done time over sending their children to a public school in a different district for a better education. It isn’t as though Olivia Jade was ever at risk of a poor education. Not only would we have preferred to see the book thrown at her but we would like to be the one throwing it.
