In March, actress Lori Loughlin, her husband Massimo Giannulli and the 12 other defendants involved in the college admissions bribery case filled a series of motion to dismiss Massachusetts Federal Court charges. However, if prosecutors recognized the late disclosure of the Defense’s notes and called it an error, they said the late notice wouldn’t be enough to dismiss the charges. As the trial is set for October, the Prosecution argued their opponents would have enough time to build up their defense in six months and rejected the procedural misconduct accusation.
Full House star and her husband claimed that the Justice Department refused to turn over evidence involving Singer’s phone calls with the defendants. In their memo, defense attorneys added that some parts of their exchanges were purposely not mentioned and that the money was always meant to go to the university’s program. On their side, Loughlin and Giannulli insisted on saying they gave checks to the University of South California as a simple donation and that they didn’t mean to influence administrators.
However, Prosecutors say that the couple has been up to criminal wrongdoing for years before Rick Singer involvement and that the $500,000 bribe of Southern California athletics is only the surface. “They were bribes, regardless of what Singer and the defendants called them, because, as the defendants knew, the corrupt insiders were soliciting the money in exchange for recruiting unqualified students, in violation of their duty of honest services to their employer,” the Prosecution said, according to CNN.
The celebrity duo is accused of three counts of conspiracy: conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud; and conspiracy to commit money laundering. They pleaded not guilty in Boston Federal Court but still face a 50 years-sentence if found guilty.