Lori Loughlin has been sentenced to two months in prison for her role in the well publicized college admission scandal. As TMZ reported, her sentence will also include a $150,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and two years probation. Loughlin’s husband, Mossimo Gianulli, was sentenced earlier Friday to five months in prison.
The couple pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, with Lori agreeing to two months of incarceration. Gianulli was sentenced to five months earlier Friday, having pleaded guilty to an additional charge of honest services wire and mail fraud, according to the report.
Loughlin and Gianulli each could have faced 20 years behind bars for the charges they faced.
Loughlin’s hearing was held virtually Friday afternoon via Zoom for the purposes of determining whether Judge Nathaniel Gorton would accept a plea deal struck in May.
“I’ve made an awful decision. I went along with a plan to give my daughters an unfair advantage in the college decision process. I thought I was acting out of love for my children, but in reality, it only undermined my daughter’s abilities and accomplishments. My decision helped exacerbate existing inequalities in society,” Loughlin said, according to TMZ .
Gorton was candid during the hearing and seemingly did not hold back when announcing the court’s decision.
“Here you are an admired, successful, professional actor with a long-lasting marriage, two apparently healthy, resilient children, more money than you could possibly need, a beautiful home in sunny Southern California – a fairy tale life. Yet you stand before me a convicted felon. And for what? For the inexplicable desire to grasp even more,” Gorton said, as reported by CBS Boston .
Loughlin’s legal issues were first made public in March 2019, when she and Gianulli were indicted by the Justice Department as part of a broad college admissions investigation known as Operation Varsity Blues . They were accused of bribing university officials to get their daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose, into the University of Southern California. In addition to such malfeasance, they allegedly had their daughters pose for photos as rowers for the sake of appearing as recruits for the school’s crew team.
Joining the Full House actress was another Hollywood A-lister swept up in the investigation: Felicity Huffman faced similar allegations in attempting to get her daughter, Sophia Grace, into a prestigious school. Huffman paid $15,000 in an attempt to rig or otherwise alter her daughter’s SAT scores. She, too, copped a plea deal and ultimately spent 11 days in prison in October 2019.
