This doesn’t happen every day: Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and Loughlin’s fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, were arrested Tuesday and charged…
This doesn’t happen every day: Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin and Loughlin’s fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, were arrested Tuesday and charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to cheat their daughters into college.
The three were charged along with nearly 50 other people in a scheme in which wealthy parents allegedly bribed college coaches and insiders at college testing centers to help get their children into some of the most elite schools in the country, federal prosecutors said at a dramatic news conference in Boston.
A spokeswoman for Huffman, Elizabeth Much, told USA TODAY she had “no information to share at this time.”
Representatives for Loughlin and Giannulli did not respond to messages from USA TODAY.
USA TODAY examined pages of court documents filed by the FBI and the U. S. Attorney’s Office in Boston to find out what prosecutors allege as the reasons why the three have been charged with mail fraud and “honest services mail fraud,” or a scheme “depriving another of the intangible right of honest services.”
In other words, by allegedly bribing school officials, they deprived other applicants of a fair chance at admission because the parents paid for those spots, says James Cohen, a law professor at Fordham University in New York.
“If I’m paying people in admissions that kind of money, I’m not depriving myself. I don’t care about honest services,” Cohen told USA TODAY. “In fact, that’s the last thing I want. But I’m depriving other people of the use of honest services.”
Here’s what the court documents say:
Felicity Huffman, 56
Her kids: The Oscar-nominated actress and her husband, Oscar-nominated actor William H. Macy, 68, have two daughters, Sophia Grace, 18, and Georgia Grace, who turns 17 on March 14.
Her “spouse”: Macy is not on the list of nearly 40 parents who were charged with participating in the nationwide bribery scheme, and the FBI affidavit lists him only as “spouse.” But the affidavit says Huffman’s “spouse” participated in conversations at their Los Angeles home with a confidential witness about the scheme.
What did they allegedly do?: Huffman and her “spouse” made a “purported” charitable donation of $15,000 to Key Worldwide Foundation, a Newport Beach, Calif.,-based charitable organization, in February 2018, according to the affidavit.
The “contribution” was made to “participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her older daughter” prior to the December 2017 SAT college entrance exam. The SAT is the most common exam high-school students take before applying to colleges and universities..
“Huffman later made arrangements to pursue the scheme a second time, for her younger daughter, before deciding not to do so,” the affidavit says.
The way the scheme worked, according to the affidavit, an individual identified as CW-1 (cooperating witness) told Huffman and her spouse that he “controlled” a college testing center where her daughter could take the college SAT and a “third party” would purport to proctor (or monitor during the exam) the daughter and “secretly correct her answers afterwards.
