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College Admissions Scandal Parent Released from Prison
The college admissions scandal that made headlines over the past two years came to a close this week as the last celebrity parent was released from prison.
Fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli is now on house arrest after his role in the 2019 college admissions scandal, according to The Associated Press.
He was released from a federal facility in Lompoc, near Santa Barbara, California, and will remain in home confinement until April 17. He reported to prison in November.
This comes after the recent release of Netflix’s Operation Varsity Blues, which detailed how famous and moneyed parents paid to have applications, exam scores and transcripts fixed and fabricated, including wildly exaggerated stories of sports abilities.
Giannulli and his wife, Full House star Lori Loughlin, paid half a million dollars to get their two daughters into the University of Southern California as recruits for the university crew team. Loughlin was released from a two-month stint in prison in December.
They were two of the most prominent figures who received a prison sentence but were not the only parents who faced prison time because of the scandal.
The Department of Justice charged more than 50 people who participated in the nationwide bribery scheme.
Actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to two weeks in prison for paying $15,000 to raise her daughter’s SAT score. Xiaoning Sui, a Canadian, was sentenced to five months in prison after paying $400,000 to college admission consultant William “Rick” Singer to get her son into UCLA.
Singer was the coordinator of the schemes. In March 2019, he pleaded guilty “to facilitating cheating on college entrance exams and using bribery to secure the admission of students to colleges as fake athletic recruits,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Giannulli and Loughlin’s youngest daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli, faced backlash after posting a TikTok video on March 26 where she lamented being publicly shamed. The comments have since been turned off on her video.
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