Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the college admissions case known as Varsity Blues.
Via video conference on Friday, the California couple admitted that they funneled half a million dollars through a bogus charity to get their two daughters into the University of Southern California as fake athletic recruits. Loughlin agreed to serve two months in federal prison; Giannulli five. The couple will also pay more than $400,000 in fines.
Sentencing was set for July 30.
During the video conference, Loughlin and Giannulli barely spoke, sitting shoulder to shoulder with their attorneys in what appeared to be their home. Each said they are high school graduates but did not graduate from college.
Retired federal judge Nancy Gertner argues this plea agreement represents overreach by federal prosecutors.
“If you look at the early papers in the case, everything that the government knows now they knew in the beginning,” Gertner said. “Is this genuine additional misconduct or is it [they] just fought the case?”
Gertner, a long-time critic of federal sentencing guidelines, thinks the government is using Loughlin and Giannulli as examples for the other parents charged in the case, and they’re being punished for simply defending themselves.
“The sentencing guidelines make more culpable the parents who paid more,” Gertner said. “That may mean that they were just stupid — not very good bargainers — not necessarily that they were more culpable.”
There were more than 250 people on the Zoom call, which had its fair share of technical issues.
At one point, Loughlin’s video dropped out and the federal judge said, “I’ve lost Ms. Loughlin. Where did she go?”
WGBH News legal analyst and Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed sees the couple’s legal agreement with federal prosecutors as “a plea discount.”
“You get a benefit for taking a deal early and not expending the government’s time and resources,” Medwed said. “Think about it as equivalent to an early bird special at a restaurant.”
While some advocates for low-income students say the couple is getting off easy because they’re paying less for getting caught than they did for the original crime, Loughlin and Giannulli are facing more prison time than many of the 22 other parents who’ve already pleaded guilty in the case.
For example, Felicity Huffman, the actress who had appeared on “Desperate Housewives,” was sentenced to two weeks in prison last fall for her role in the same scheme.
Loughlin is best known for her role as Aunt Becky on the sitcom "Full House" from 1988 through 1995.
