On Tuesday, actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, along with 14 other parents, were hit with a new money laundering charge, this in the wake of the college admissions bribery scheme. The new charges come a day after actress Felicity Huffman and 12 other parents and a coach agreed to plead guilty. An indictment brought Tuesday adds a charge of money laundering conspiracy against the couple and 14 other parents.
Loughlin and Giannulli were among 33 prominent parents accused of participating in a scheme that involved rigging college entrance exams and bribing coaches at elite universities. The parents are accused of paying an admissions consultant, Rick Singer, to cheat on their children's college entrance exams and get their children admitted as athletic recruits at such elite schools as USC, Georgetown and Yale. They were arrested last month on a single charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
Loughlin and Giannulli are accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters into the University of Southern California as crew team recruits, even though neither of them played the sport. They appeared in Boston federal court briefly last week and were not asked to enter a plea. They have not publicly addressed the allegations against them.
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