Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin Have Been Charged in a Huge College Admissions Scandal
LORI LOUGHLIN and FELICITY HUFFMAN could be in big trouble. They just got busted as part of a massive, nationwide college admissions scandal . . . the biggest one our justice department has EVER investigated.
They're calling it "Operation Varsity Blues". The official charges against both of them are "conspiracy to commit mail fraud" and "honest services mail fraud".
Here's what was happening in a nutshell: A man named William Singer set up a fake charity that rich people would pay into. In exchange, he would fraudulently get their kids into some of the top schools in the country.
How would he do it? Sometimes with straight-up bribes. But Singer would also help students cheat on college entrance exams . . . or he'd even fake ATHLETIC CREDIENTIALS for them.
And that often included staging photo shoots of the student "playing" a sport . . . or taking pictures of another athlete and PHOTOSHOPPING THEIR FACE on them.
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Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin Have Been Charged in a Huge College Admissions Scandal
People were paying from thousands to MILLIONS of dollars to get their kids into schools like Georgetown, UCLA, USC, Stanford, Wake Forest, Yale, and others. Singer has been running this scam since 2011.
Huffman . . . who you'd probably know best from "Desperate Housewives" . . . reportedly paid $15,000 to help her eldest daughter out. What happened was that after she took the SAT, a proctor secretly CORRECTED her wrong answers.
They almost didn't get the proctor they wanted though. The feds have an email Felicity wrote to Singer in 2017 that says, quote, "Ruh Ro! Looks like [my daughter's high school] wants to provide own proctor." (!!!)
Felicity and her husband WILLIAM H. MACY talked to Singer about doing it again for their younger daughter, but decided not to.
Macy was NOT charged, but that's kind of a technicality. They have evidence that he participated in talks for the younger daughter . . . but that transaction never went through.
As for Lori Loughlin, she and her husband Mossimo Giannulli BOTH got nailed. They allegedly paid $500,000 to have their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team . . . even though neither of them participated in the sport.
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Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin Have Been Charged in a Huge College Admissions Scandal (continued)
The Feds say they just sent the school pictures of the girls on ROWING MACHINES. (Sounds like if these two don't get a good lawyer, they're gonna have an EMPTIER HOUSE pretty soon.)
Charges have been filed against dozens of people, including exam administrators, school athletic coaches, and parents. It's not clear if they'll go after any of the KIDS. And the colleges themselves seem to be off the hook. At least for now.
Felicity was reportedly arrested by FBI agents with their GUNS DRAWN early yesterday morning. Her bond was set at $250,000, and she was ordered to surrender her passport. (Here's Macy showing up for her hearing.)
Lori would have received the same treatment, but she was out of the country. She's expected to surrender today.
(If you want to take a deep dive into this chaos, you can see the names of everyone who was charged and read the full complaint here.)
College Scandal Fallout: The "Aunt Becky" Memes and More
1. LORI LOUGHLIN purged her social media accounts yesterday . . . probably because of all the "Full House" / Aunt Becky memes.
Oh, and does anyone remember the old "Full House"episode where Jesse lied to get the twins into an elite preschool, and Becky got mad? Simpler times.
2. People have been jumping all over a video Lori's daughter Olivia Jade posted last year, where she said she didn't care about going to USC . . . and all she was looking forward to were parties and game days.
She apologized for it later.
3. And then there was this past January, when WILLIAM H. MACY talked about how "stressful" the college admissions process is.
4. It looks like colleges have a long history of basing admissions on either money or social standing. Even schools like Harvard and Yale. The only difference is, in the old days, they did it right out in the open.
5. ROB LOWE took a veiled shot at Felicity and Lori on social media. DONALD TRUMP JR. tried, too . . . but the Internet let him have it.