Lori Loughlin Sentenced to Two Months in Prison for Involvement in College Admissions Scandal

Actress Lori Loughlin has been sentenced to two months in prison and fined $150,000 for her role in the national college admissions scandal. Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli, who was sentenced to five months in prison earlier today, pleaded guilty to paying $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters admitted into the University of Southern California.

The celebrity couple was sentenced via videoconference in a Boston court on Friday, with U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton presiding. Gorton accepted Loughlin and Giannulli’s plea deal; had he rejected the terms, the entire deal would have been void.

Loughlin and Giannulli were first implicated in the college admissions scheme in March 2019, when federal authorities charged them with paying William Rick Singer for a “side door” into USC. As part of the fraud, Loughlin and Giannulli allegedly paid a total of $500,000 for daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose to be designated as recruits to the USC crew team, despite the fact that they did not participate in the sport, in order to ensure their admission to the university.

The Full House star and her fashion designer husband initially pleaded not guilty, but in May 2020, they hammered out a deal with prosecutors. According to CNN, Loughlin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, and Giannulli pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud.

Loughlin’s two-month sentence is in line with prosecutors’ requests. Earlier this week, federal prosecutors formally asked that Loughlin be sentenced to two months in prison and Giannulli five months, as “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,” wrote Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling in a detention memo. “Loughlin took a less active role, but was nonetheless fully complicit,” he added.

Loughlin is the second high-profile star to be sentenced for her involvement in the college admissions scandal. In September 2019, actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in prison and fined $300,000 for paying $15,000 to inflate her daughter’s SAT scores. Huffman ultimately spent 11 days in a federal prison in Dublin, California.