After nearly two years of wondering what would happen when the final sentence came down for Lori Loughlin because of her part in the college admissions scandal that saw her and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, be charged with paying to falsify documents so that their daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose, could attend college, we now know exactly what Loughlin's sentence will be.
In the ruling, which came Friday from Judge Nathaniel Gorton (via People Magazine), the judge accepted the terms of the plea deal Loughlin entered this May, and she has now been sentenced to a two-month stay in a federal prison. Loughlin will also have to pay a $150,000 fine and serve 150 hours of community service.
Lori Loughlin and her husband, along with actress Felicity Huffman (who quickly pleaded guilty and was done with her short prison sentence by the end of October 2019) and dozens of others, were arrested and eventually charged in the college admissions scandal starting in March 2019. After originally pleading not guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, along with additional charges of money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud in April 2019, the couple changed tactics and took a new plea deal in late May of this year.
In accordance with that plea deal, Lori Loughlin confessed to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, while Giannulli confessed to a count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud. Earlier today, Giannulli was sentenced to five months in federal prison, along with now having to pay a $250,000 fine, and do 250 hours of community service. Giannulli was also ordered to surrender himself to a facility, which will be chosen by the Bureau of Prisons, on November 19 of this year. There's no word yet on when Loughlin will have to begin her prison sentence.
The couple was accused of paying William “Rick” Singer, who ran the fraudulent Key Worldwide Foundation, a whopping $500,000 in bribes to see that their daughters were named as recruits to the USC crew team, when neither of their children had ever participated in the sport, as a means to help them get admitted to the college. This April, new charges were added for both Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli which would have seen them go to prison for about 50 years total, as well as being forced to pay millions in fines if they were convicted, and it would seem that heaping on those additional potential punishments convinced the couple to agree to the new plea deal.
Loughlin, of course, has famously lost all of her prestige jobs because of her part in the scandal. Within days of news about her part in the scam coming to light, she was dropped from Netflix's Fuller House and all of her work on the Hallmark Channel, including her high profile role on the network's popular series, When Calls the Heart. Seeing as how she now has a prison sentence and lot of community service to complete, it's unlikely that fans will be watching Loughlin on any new shows for the foreseeable future.
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