American actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli have been sentenced to prison for their roles in a college admission bribery scandal.
Loughlin, 56, was sentenced to two months in prison at an online hearing Friday in federal court in Boston conducted via Zoom by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton.
A few hours before Loughlin’s sentence, her husband Giannulli, 57, was sentenced to five months in prison by Gorton, USA Today reports.
Besides the prison term, Loughlin will pay a fine of $150,000, followed by two years of supervised release and 100 hours of community service. Giannulli will pay a fine of $250,000 followed by two years of supervised release and 250 hours of community service.
“I deeply regret the harm that my actions have caused my daughters, my wife and others, I take full responsibility for my conduct and I am ready to accept the consequences and move forward with the lessons I’ve learned from this experience,” Giannulli told judge Gorton.
Judge Gorton, however, told Giannulli that there was no excuse for his actions and that he was convicted of a crime “motivated by hubris,” which he defined as “wanton pride.”
“I never know where to begin when I’m sentencing someone in the college admissions scandal, and it astonishes me every time I have to do it,” said the judge, who has handled many of the cases prosecuted in the scandal.
He told Giannulli that, unlike defendants in drug-dealing cases, he, Giannulli, could not claim a bad upbringing or ignorance of the law. If he could send drug dealers to prison, then it was right to send Giannulli to prison.
“You certainly did know better. You helped sponsor a breathtaking fraud on the nation’s system of education and involved your wife and daughters in (a plan) to scheme your daughters’ way into a university,” Gorton said, before officially pronouncing the sentence.
The pair do not have to serve their sentences immediately. Giannulli has been told he has to self-surrender at an as-yet-undetermined facility within 90 days, Daily Mail reports.
Loughlin and Giannulli had paid $500,000 in bribes to the mastermind of a nationwide admissions scheme, Rick Singer, to get their two daughters, Olivia Jade Giannulli and Isabella Giannulli, accepted into the University of Southern California as fake crew recruits. Both their daughters had posed as recruits to the university’s crew team, even though neither practised the sport.
Lori Loughlin is best known for her role as Rebecca Donaldson-Katsopolis on the ABC sitcom Full House (1988–1995) and its Netflix sequel Fuller House (2016–2019).
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