LOS ANGELES, CA. (THECOUNT) — Mossimo Giannulli, the fashion designer who along with his actress wife Lori Loughlin are accused in the highly publicized college admissions scam, admitted in an 2016 interview that he lied to his own parents about attending the University of Southern California.
Giannulli gave an interview in 2016 published by the fashion blog The Hundreds, admitting that he lied to his parents about attending USC — while they continued to pay his tuition.
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“SC was expensive, so that was how I was starting my company. I used all that cash,” Giannulli said in the interview.
‘I used to have hundreds of thousands of cash in my top drawer in my fraternity house. And I was like, ‘this is kind of too easy. I need a bigger platform. If I had a bigger account base, I could really kill it…’”
CNN confirmed with USC that Giannulli attended the college in 1984 for one semester, but not as a fully enrolled student. He was reportedly given “visitor status” and lived in a fraternity house on campus.
Giannulli and his wife, a former star on the sitcom “Full House,” pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering conspiracy. They are accused of paying a fraudulent nonprofit organization half a million dollars to have their daughters admitted to USC as crew team recruits, though neither daughter is a crew athlete, reports CrimeOnline.
Last week, Loughlin and Giannulli, appeared in court arguing they weren’t ready to make a decision about whether or not to plead guilty after allegedly paying a whopping $500,000 to a fake charity in order to get their daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose into USC.
Flash forward to Tuesday, the couple did not show up to their court appearance, instead their lawyer entering a not guilty plea on their behalf, which is the defendants’ prerogative at this stage in the proceedings.
The embattled couple eventually made a decision and rejected the prosecutor’s plea deal that would’ve given them a minimum two-year prison sentence.
TMZ reports, Loughlin is ready for a fight, because she’s just entered her plea in the case that could land her in prison for a minimum of north of five years.
The former power couple entered pleas to all charges, which included conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
They both face a minimum of 4 years and 9 months in prison, plea dead or no plea deal.
Last week the U.S. Attorney out of Boston gave all of the parents an ultimatum to either accept a plea or see the case to the Grand Jury and additional charges would be filed, and that’s exactly what happened. TMZ notes.