BREAKING NEWS: Lori Loughlin will serve two months in prison and her husband Mossimo Giannulli will serve five months for bribing college officials to get daughters into school after taking a plea deal to avoid spending 40 years behind bars
- The couple signed plea agreements on Wednesday to change their plea to guilty
- Now, Lori will serve two months and pay a $150,000 fine and Mossimo will serve five months and pay a $150,000 fine
- They both agree to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud
- They paid $500,000 to get their daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella into USC
- They pretended the pair were crew stars when neither played the sport
- Lori and her husband stood firm for months, claiming they did not know they were part of a bribery scheme
- They denied their role while Felicity Huffman served 14 days in prison for hers
- A sentencing hearing for the pair has not been scheduled; Massachusetts courthouses remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic
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Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli have changed their plea to guilty in the college bribery admission scandal and now hope to serve two months and five months behind bars respectively.
The pair have for months denied their role in paying $500,000 to get their daughters into USC by pretending they were rowing stars when neither had played the sport.
The Justice Department on Thursday announced they had changed their plea to guilty and will now admit one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud.
As part of their plea deal, Lori will serve two months in prison and pay $150,000 and Mossimo will serve five months in prison.
Both will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars.
Both had been facing additional charges – conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery; conspiracy to commit money laundering – that have been dropped. Had they been convicted on all counts at trial, they could have faced 40 years in prison each.
A judge still has to approve their sentences. A hearing date has not yet been set and in other cases, the judge has imposed harsher sentences than have been recommended by prosecutors.
Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli have changed their plea to guilty in the college bribery admission scandal
The pair signed plea agreements on Wednesday
The pair are the 23rd and 24th parents to plead guilty as part of the case.
Felicity Huffman was one of the first. She served just 14 days in prison last year.
The scheme involved wealthy parents paying Rick Singer, the mastermind, enormous sums of money to either manipulate their kids’ college entry exams to get them a higher score, or to help them pretend they were athletic stars in order to get into a good school.
Singer had an array of exam monitors and sports staff within the colleges on the payroll who facilitated it.
Loughlin and her husband paid half a million dollars to help their daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella, get into USC by pretending they were sports stars.
More than 50 people were charged after months of investigation which involved Singer cooperating with the authorities and recording some of his phone calls with parents.
Lori and Mossimo denied it immediately and said they thought they were giving to charity.
Other parents, like Huffman who paid to have one of her daughter’s test scores augmented to make it more impressive, admitted their roles and tearfully apologized in court.
Lori with the couple’s daughters Olivia Jade (left) and Isabella Rose (right)