photo credit: Kathy Hutchins // Shutterstock
Lori Laughlin, aka Aunt Becky from the hit 90s show, Full House, and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli have turned themselves in for bribing USC to get their daughters in the college. Their bonds were set at $1 million each. The couple put their house up as collateral to secure the bond.
Lori and her husband, Mossimo allegedly paid $500,000 to have it look like their 2 daughters were recruits for USC’s crew team, even thought they don’t actually play crew.
Lori was told she’ll have to surrender her passport in December after she finishes up projects with the Hallmark Channel, but in wake of this case, Hallmark has cut ties with Lori. Hallmark said it was ‘saddened’ by the allegations involving the actress and revealed on Thursday the network would no longer be working with her. She has also been banned from talking to other suspects or witnesses in the case, other than her daughters and husband. The couple will be back in court March 29th, along with Felicity Huffman.
FBI showed up at the couple’s on Tuesday morning, arresting Mossimo, but Lori was in Vancouver for work, leading her to turn herself into the Feds on Wednesday. The couple was released Tuesday night.
Ring leader, Rick Singer has taken a plea deal in the case for racketeering conspiracy, money laundering, tax conspiracy and obstruction of justice for funneling of money to college athletic coaches and administrators in return of helping their kids gain university admissions.
In the case bribery case, 50 people total were arrested and indicted for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. The alleged scam was found after authorities found Rick Singer ran an operation helping students get into the college of their choice. Authorities say parents would pay the man a predetermined amount which he would funnel to an SAT or ACT administrator or a college athletic coach.
The feds say if the money went to a college coach, the coach would arrange a fake profile that listed the student as an athlete. If the money went to an exam administrator, the administrator would either hire a proctor to take the SAT/ACT or correct the student’s answers.
In response the bribery case, two females from Stanford are now suing the ring leader of the bribery scam, Rick Singer, and USC, Stanford, UCLA, University of San Deigo, Wake Forest, Texas, Yale and Georgetown. They claim that “unqualified students found their way into the admissions rolls of highly selective universities, while those students who played by the rules and did not have college-bribing parents were denied admissions.” They are looking for others who were denied admission to these schools as well.
Erica Olsen, argues she had stellar test scores and athletic talents yet was rejected from Yale. Adding that had she known “the system at Yale University was warped and rigged by fraud” she wouldn’t have applied there. The other young lady, Kalea Woods, was denied by USC and says she was never informed “parents could buy their way into the university through bribery and dishonest schemes.”
Both ladies graduated from Stanford but claim their degrees are now devalued by the criminal racketeering charges.
Source: TMZ
Written by Clarke Jones