Actresses Lori Loughlin of Full House and Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives are among those charged in the largest scale college entrance exam cheating scheme ever prosecuted.
The scam involved facilitating cheating on tests like the SAT and ACT and bribing college administrators and coaches to recruit students as athletes. Loughlin and Huffman were both charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services fraud.
According to the criminal complaint shared by Buzzfeed, here, the cheating was facilitated "in some cases by posing as the actual students, and in others by providing students with answers during the exams or by correcting their answers after they had completed the exams."
“In many instances, the students taking the exams were unaware that their parents had arranged for this cheating," according to the FBI. Those included in the complaint include three organisers, two ACT/SAT administrators, an exam proctor, nine coaches from elite schools, and 33 parents.
According to the complaint, Huffman paid $15,000 to doctor an SAT exam for her oldest daughter. Her husband, actor William H. Macy, is referred to as a "spouse" in the complaint, but isn't named. He has not been been charged, according to the documents.
Huffman was told her daughter would take the exam at a "controlled" testing centre. The organizer would then arrange for a special proctor to administer it and correct answers without her daughter even knowing. The actress allegedly discussed participating in the scam again last October, this time for her youngest daughter, but didn't go through with it. The taped conversation was evidently obtained by the FBI, The Hollywood Reporter reports.
Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, are accused of paying $500,000 to have their daughters designated as recruits to USC's crew team, guaranteeing their admission to the school, according to the documents.
The other parents in the complaint include several "CEOs of private and public companies" and one "well known fashion designer," U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in a press conference on Tuesday.
"There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy and I will add there will not be a separate criminal justice system either," Lelling added. "For every student admitted through fraud an honest, genuinely talented student was rejected."
The alleged mastermind behind the scam is a man named William Singer. He will plead guilty to charges today, according to Lelling. Singer ran a college counselling service and, starting in 2011, was paid on average between $250,000 and $400,000 by parents to guarantee admissions to schools like Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, USC, University of Texas, and Wake Forest.
He used that money to "bribe college officials," according to Lelling.
The schools themselves are not targets of investigation right now, and are not seen as co-conspirators.
Rose is a Senior Editor at ELLE overseeing features and projects about women's issues. She is an accomplished and compassionate storyteller and editor who excels in obtaining exclusive interviews and unearthing compelling features.
