Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin Charged With Mail Fraud in Massive College Exam Scheme

UPDATE

9:59 AM PT — According to a spokesperson for the United States Attorney’s Office, Huffman and Loughlin's husband were taken into custody this morning and are expected to appear in court this afternoon.

Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were among the 40 people charged with possible mail fraud in a massive college entrance exam scheme.

An arrest warrant for the pair — and dozens of others — was issued on March 11 in Boston, Massachusetts for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

The alleged scheme involved getting students admitted to elite colleges and helping potential students to cheat on their college entrance exams. The colleges in question included Georgetown University, Stanford University, UCLA, the University of San Diego, USC, University of Texas, Wake Forest, and Yale.

In the arrest warrant, Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy, allegedly "made a purported charitable contribution of $15,000 to KWF [a college prep company] to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her oldest daughter. Huffman later made arrangements to pursue the scheme a second time, for her younger daughter, before deciding not to do so."

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The warrant claims that a cooperating witness, the founder of KWF, told Huffman and Macy "that he 'controlled' a testing center, and could arrange for a third party to purport to proctor their daughter's SAT and secretly correct her answers afterwards. CW-1 has advised investigators that HUFFMAN and her spouse agreed to the plan."

Eventually, Huffman's daughter took the SATs and scored a 1420, an improvement of 400 points over her previous score, the documents claim.

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According to the warrant, Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli allegedly "agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team-despite the fact that they did not participate in crew-thereby facilitating their admission to USC."

In an interview with the “Zach Sang Show” that was posted earlier this week, Loughlin’s daughter, Olivia Jade, says that her parents made her go to college because they did not go. She also talked about other girls messaging her about how to get into college.

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The warrant also includes transcripts of phone calls recorded by the FBI that shows Huffman and Loughlin, separately, discussing the plan with the cooperating witnesses.

Loughlin was recorded at one point saying, "So we-- so we just-- so we just have to say we made a donation to your foundation and that's it, end of story."

Huffman was recorded talking about her youngest daughter (who ultimately did go through with the scheme) where she expressed worry if her daughter's SAT score went up too much.

"But I just didn't know if it'd be odd for [the tutor] if we go, 'Oh, she did this in-- in March 9th, but she did so much better in May,'" Huffman said. "I don't know if that'd be like-- if [the tutor] would be like 'Wow.'"

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