Mossimo Giannulli And Lori Loughlin Sentenced To Prison

LOS ANGELES, CA — From power couple to the face of the nationwide college scandal, the saga of designer Mossimo Giannulli and actress Lori Loughlin came to a head Friday in a Boston courtroom.

The "Full House" star was sentenced to two months behind bars Friday and was also ordered to pay a $150,000 fine and serve two years of supervised release with 100 hours of community service. Her husband, Giannulli was sentenced Friday morning to five months behind bars for bribing officials to get the couple's daughters admitted to USC as crew team recruits, even though neither girl played the sport. The sentences were among the stiffer ones handed down to parents in the scandal, in part, because the celebrity couple were among holdouts who rejected early plea offers.

Over a Zoom conference, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton also ordered Giannulli to pay a $250,000 fine and serve two years of supervised release with 250 hours of community service, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston.

Loughlin's sentencing is expected at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time.

The couple is the most high profile among dozens of defendant parents in the admissions corruption scandal dubbed Operation Varsity Blues by federal investigators. The indictments read like a who's who of the rich and powerful. The scandal shocked the nation, laying bare a corrupt process in which those with means could cheat or buy their children's way into elite universities such as UCS, Georgetown and Stanford.

Gorton said he believed the Giannulli sentence is "sufficient but not greater than necessary under the circumstance."

The couple gained notoriety as the most famous holdouts who initially refused plea deals in the case. Through their attorneys, the pair proclaimed their innocence and vowed to fight the charges at trial. However, efforts to have the case thrown out, didn't go their way, and they eventually accepted deals rather than risk long prison sentences.

The couple were accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to the mastermind of the scheme, corrupt college admissions counselor Rick Singer, to get their daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli, accepted into USC as crew recruits.

After a year of insisting on their innocence, the 56-year-old actress pleaded guilty in May to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, while her husband pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud.

As part of the scheme, Loughlin and Giannulli sent fake crew recruiting profiles to Singer that included bogus credentials, medals and photos of one of their daughters on a rowing machine. Neither daughter is now enrolled at USC.

"The crime Giannulli and Loughlin committed was serious," prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. "Over the course of two years, they engaged twice in Singer's fraudulent scheme. 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."

According to the memo, evidence suggests Giannulli, 57, was the more active participant in the scheme.

"He engaged more frequently with Singer, directed the bribe payments to USC and Singer, and personally confronted his daughter's high school counselor to prevent the scheme from being discovered, brazenly lying about his daughter's athletic abilities," federal prosecutors wrote. "Loughlin took a less active role, but was nonetheless fully complicit, eagerly enlisting Singer a second time for her younger daughter, and coaching her daughter not to `say too much' to her high school's legitimate college counselor, lest he catch on to their fraud."

More than 50 people have been charged in the scheme. Of 38 parents charged, 26 have pleaded guilty and received sentences ranging from the two weeks given to "Desperate Housewives" star Felicity Huffman to a nine-month term imposed on Doug Hodge, former head of a Newport Beach-based bond management firm.

Huffman was released from a low-security federal prison camp in Northern California 11 days into a 14-day sentence for paying to have a proctor correct her daughter's answers on a college-entrance exam.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.