Actor Lori Loughlin was released from prison on Monday after spending two months behind bars for paying half a million dollars in bribes to put his two daughters in college.
Loughlin was released from federal prison in Dublin, California, where she was serving time for her participation in the college admissions bribery scheme, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said. Her husband, stylist Mossimo Giannulli, is serving a five-month sentence in a prison in Lompoc, near Santa Barbara, California.
Giannulli is scheduled to be released on April 17, the Bureau of Prisons said. Prosecutors said Giannulli deserved a tougher sentence because he was “the most active participant in the scheme”.
Loughlin and Giannulli were among the highest profile defendants accused in the scheme, which revealed how far some wealthy parents will go to place their children in elite universities. Authorities said parents channeled bribes through a bogus charity run by an admissions consultant to place their children in the best schools with fake athletic credentials or fraudulent test results.
The famous couple admitted in May that they paid $ 500,000 to take their two daughters to the University of Southern California as recruits to the team, although neither was a rower. The guilty plea was a surprising turnaround for the couple, whose lawyers had insisted for a year that they were innocent and accused investigators of fabricating evidence against them.
The only public comments made by Loughlin or Giannulli about the case since his arrest last year were at his sentencing hearings in August. Loughlin, who gained fame for her role as the healthy aunt Becky on the sitcom Full House, told the judge that her actions “helped to exacerbate the inequalities in society” and promised to do everything in her power to use her experience as a “catalyst for do Good “.
The youngest daughter, social media influencer Olivia Jade, made her first public comments on this month’s scandal in the Red Table Talk series. Olivia Jade said that she doesn’t want or deserve pity.
“We messed up everything. I just want a second chance to be like, ‘I acknowledge I was wrong’. And for a long time I was unable to talk about it because of the legality behind it, ”she said.
Loughlin and Giannulli were initially due to go to prison on November 19, but prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed that Loughlin could begin his sentence on October 30. Loughlin also agreed that she would not seek early release for reasons related to the coronavirus, prosecutors said.
Of the nearly 60 parents, coaches and others accused in the case, about a dozen are still fighting the charges. Sentences for parents who have pleaded the case so far vary from a few weeks to nine months. Actor Felicity Huffman served nearly two weeks in prison last year for paying an admissions consultant $ 15,000 for an inspector to correct his daughter’s responses to the SAT.