Lori Loughlin's Husband Boasted Of 'Working' The System: Feds

HOLLYWOOD, CA — Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, answered to new charges in the college admissions scandal Friday, pleading not guilty to additional bribery charges.

Loughlin and Giannulli, a fashion designer, were among 11 parents slammed with additional charges last week in an indictment returned by a grand jury in Boston. They are accused of conspiring with William "Rick" Singer, a Newport Beach consultant, to commit not just fraud and money laundering, but federal program bribery as well to secure their daughter's fraudulent admissions to USC as coxswain recruits even though neither rowed.

Since the scandal broke last spring, Loughlin and Giannulli have vowed to fight the charges, a high-stakes strategy that prompted prosecutors to pile on the the charges. Prosecutors had previously warned all the defendants they would face more charges if they didn't plead guilty. Several parents, including Oscar-winning actress Felicity Huffman, pleaded guilty, and she served 11 days in prison earlier this month. The remaining parents are now charged with conspiring to commit fraud, money laundering and federal program bribery. If convicted, they could face years in prison.

The recent indictments don't include new crimes, but they do include seemingly damning details that were previously unknown. In the case of Loughlin and Giannulli, the indictment says, the fashion designer emailed his accountant in April 2017 to explain a $200,000 invoice he'd received from Singer, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"Good news my daughter ... is in [U]SC," Giannulli wrote to his accountant, according to the indictment. "Bad is I had to work the system."

The couple paid $250,000 in all to misrepresent their older daughter as a recruited coxswain and bribe Heinel, the athletics official, to slip her into the school, prosecutors allege.

USC announced the famous pair's two daughters are no longer enrolled at the school in October. According to prosecutors, Loughlin and Giannulli paid $500,000 in bribes to have their daughters, Instagram celebrity Olivia Jade Giannulli and Isabella Rose Giannulli, admitted to USC as crew recruits even though neither rowed. In a statement provided to Patch, the school announced:

"Olivia Jade Giannulli and Isabella Rose Giannulli are not currently enrolled. We are unable to provide additional information because of student privacy laws."

Loughlin and Huffman are the two most famous of dozens of parents caught up in the scandal, which reads as a who's who of the wealthy elite. Huffman and Loughlin took opposite approaches, however. One of the earliest defendants to plead guilty and publicly apologize, Huffman received leniency from federal prosecutors. As the face of the holdouts, Loughlin continues to rack up additional charges from a Justice Department willing to tighten the pressure on parents heading to trial.

Huffman, 56, was sentenced to the prison time in September. She was also ordered to spend a year on supervised release, pay a $30,000 fine and perform 250 hours of community service.

The "Desperate Housewives" actress pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud for paying a $15,000 bribe to have a proctor correct her daughter's answers on a college- entrance exam. She was the first parent to be sentenced in connection with the wide-ranging college-admissions cheating scandal, a probe dubbed "Varsity Blues."

Huffman was set to be released from prison two days later, a Sunday, but was allowed to leave Friday as a result of normal policy for inmates who are due to be released on weekends, officials said.

Dozens of parents and college athletic coaches were implicated in the 52-defendant nationwide bribery scandal, in which wealthy parents paid Newport Beach businessman William "Rick" Singer thousands of dollars to have their children's entrance-exam scores doctored. In other cases, students were falsely admitted to elite universities as athletic recruits, even though they never had any experience in the sports for which they were being recruited.

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