After maintaining their innocence for more than a year, Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli plead guilty to fraud in the college admissions scandal.
Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband pleaded guilty Friday to charges of fraud in the college admissions scandal, admitting they scammed their daughters’ way into USC with lies and illegal payments.
How long Loughlin and her husband J. Mossimo Giannulli will spend in prison for their crimes remains undecided. The judge in the case must still decide whether to accept the couple’s guilty pleas and the terms of deals they struck with prosecutors. Under those deals, Loughlin would spend two months in prison and Giannulli would be sentenced to five months behind bars.
Nonetheless, the guilty pleas marked a sharp about-face for the couple. Since their arrests more than a year ago, Loughlin and Giannulli maintained their innocence, repeatedly pleading not guilty as prosecutors ratcheted up pressure on them with enhanced charges, including conspiracy to commit fraud, bribery and money laundering.
Before saying a somber “guilty” under oath Friday, the television star and fashion designer acknowledged what they had long denied: that they schemed with William “Rick” Singer, a Newport Beach consultant at the heart of the scandal, to pass off their two daughters, Olivia Jade Giannulli and Isabella Rose Giannulli, as rowing a scam that cleared the way for the girls’ admission to the elite university.
