Kate Taylor

Prosecutors have accused Loughlin and Giannulli of paying $500,000 to get their two daughters designated as recruits to the University of Southern California women’s crew team as a way to ensure their admission to the school.

The couple have maintained their innocence, even as Hollywood gossip magazines have reported that Loughlin is increasingly worried about what will happen. In contrast, the other Hollywood actress ensnared in the case, Felicity Huffman, who was accused of paying $15,000 to cheat on her daughter’s SAT, pleaded guilty and has already completed her prison sentence. (Huffman was sentenced to 14 days but served only 12, including the day she was arrested.)

Prosecutors originally charged roughly three dozen parents arrested in the case with one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. After Huffman and roughly a dozen other parents agreed to plead to that count, prosecutors added money laundering charges against the remaining parents, including Loughlin and Giannulli. Then, last week, they added the new charge, of federal programs bribery, which can carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.

Lawyers involved in the case have said prosecutors brought the new charges in part out of frustration with the sentences given out in the case so far, which have ranged from probation to five months in prison, and have all been less than what prosecutors had asked for.

In a statement issued Oct. 22, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Andrew E. Lelling, said the new charges were “the result of ongoing investigation in the nationwide college admissions case.”

“Our goal from the beginning has been to hold the defendants fully accountable for corrupting the college admissions process through cheating, bribery and fraud,” Lelling said.

This article originally appeared in

Lori Loughlin Pleads Not Guilty to New College Admissions Scandal Charge

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, a fashion designer, have pleaded not guilty to new bribery charges prosecutors have brought against them in the college admissions scandal, signaling that they intend, at least for now, to keep fighting the case.

The charge, announced by Rachael Rollins, the Suffolk County district attorney, bore similarities to the case of Michelle Carter, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2017 for repeatedly urging a close friend in text messages to kill himself.

The former student, Inyoung You, 21, and her boyfriend, Alexander Urtula, 22, were attending Boston College when Urtula leapt to his death from a parking garage in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury on May 20. Urtula’s family, from New Jersey, was in Boston that day to watch him appear in the graduation ceremony at 10 a.m. He died about 90 minutes before it began.

In a news conference, Rollins said You had been physically, verbally and psychologically abusive to Urtula over the course of an 18-month relationship, with the abuse becoming more intense and demeaning in the days and hours before his death. She said classmates and family members had observed the abuse, which was also documented in Urtula’s journal and in tens of thousands of text messages. Rollins said You urged Urtula hundreds of times to kill himself and repeatedly told him that she, his family and the world would be better off without him. You also used attempts and threats of self-harm to control Urtula, Rollins said.

The New York Times was unable to contact a representative for You on Monday.

Prosecutors said that on the morning of Urtula’s suicide, You was tracking his location on her phone, as she frequently did, and was present on the roof of the garage at the time that he jumped.

“The indictment alleges Ms. You’s behavior was wanton and reckless, and resulted in overwhelming Mr. Urtula’s will to live,” Rollins said, “and that she created life-threatening conditions for him that she had a legal duty to alleviate, which, we allege, she failed to do.”

“Domestic violence may not always look the same,” she added, “but it is always about power and control.”

You, who studied economics and was scheduled to graduate in May 2020, withdrew from classes in August, according to a Boston College spokesman.

She is currently in South Korea, where she is from, Rollins said. Prosecutors said that a grand jury returned an indictment in the case this month and that they were working to secure You’s return to the United States.

“We’re in contact with somebody who is saying that they’re representing her, to see if she will voluntarily return,” Rollins said. “If she does not, we will utilize the power we have to get her back.”

In the two months before Urtula’s death, Rollins said, the couple exchanged more than 75,000 text messages, including more than 47,000 sent by You.

Asked to compare this case with the case of Carter, who was 17 when her friend, Conrad Roy III, killed himself, Rollins said that there were similarities but also significant differences.

Carter had very limited physical contact with Roy, but “we have, quite frankly, I would say, the opposite of that,” she said. “We have a barrage of a complete and utter attack on this man’s very will and conscience and psyche by an individual, to the tune of 47,000 text messages in the two months leading up, and an awareness, we would argue, of his frail state at that point.”

The Massachusetts Legislature is considering a bill called “Conrad’s Law” that would make it a crime punishable by up to five years in prison to encourage or coerce someone into killing himself or herself.

The Boston College spokesman, Jack Dunn, said Urtula was a biology major. He had completed his course work in December 2018 and was working as a researcher in New York at the time of his suicide.

“Alexander was a gifted student at Boston College, who was involved in many activities, including the Philippine Society of Boston College,” Dunn said. “We continue to offer our condolences to Alex’s family.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Former Boston College Student Charged in Boyfriend's Suicide

BOSTON — A former Boston College student has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the suicide of her college boyfriend on his graduation day, prosecutors announced Monday.

In bringing the new charges against Loughlin and the other parents, prosecutors did not make any new allegations of misconduct. Even so, the new charge, conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, has the potential to lead to longer sentences if any of the parents are convicted.

Loughlin, actress Felicity Huffman and 31 other parents were charged in March in a scheme to cheat on college entrance exams and bribe college coaches. From soon after they were arrested, Huffman and Loughlin’s paths as defendants have diverged.

Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, were accused of paying $500,000 to get their two daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Giannulli, designated as recruits to the women’s crew team at the University of Southern California even though they were not qualified, ensuring their admission. USC said in a statement from the registrar Monday that the two were no longer enrolled; the statement declined to give any further information, citing student privacy laws.

Huffman, an Emmy winner for her role on “Desperate Housewives,” was among a group of roughly a dozen parents who pleaded guilty early on, and she was sentenced in September to 14 days in prison. Huffman, who acknowledged paying $15,000 to cheat on her daughter’s SAT, reported to a minimum-security prison outside of San Francisco on Oct. 15 and is scheduled to be released Sunday.

Lawyers involved in the case said that prosecutors were disappointed with the sentences that a judge has given to Huffman and other parents who pleaded guilty and that they brought the new charge in part in the hope of increasing sentences. The sentences have ranged from no prison time to five months in prison and have all been less than what prosecutors have asked for.

Prosecutors had been warning defense lawyers for weeks that they planned to bring the new bribery charge. They had given some parents a deadline of Monday or a few days before to agree to plead guilty if they wanted to avoid having the charge added. Four parents took them up on the offer and pleaded guilty Monday.

Federal programs bribery involves theft from or bribery of an agent of an organization that receives more than $10,000 in federal funds in any one-year period. The parents had previously been charged with money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud.

Lori Loughlin and Other Parents Face New Charges in College Admissions Scandal

Federal prosecutors Tuesday brought new bribery charges against actress Lori Loughlin and 10 other parents who have pleaded not guilty in the college admissions case, signaling an effort to increase the potential consequences for parents who intend to fight the accusations.

Marking an aggressive new posture in the case, prosecutors filed bribery charges against Loughlin and 10 other parents who had pleaded not guilty to earlier fraud and money laundering counts. The prosecutors also brought new fraud charges against several parents and an array of new charges against coaches and others charged in the scheme.

Federal prosecutors declined to comment on the new charges. But lawyers involved in the case said prosecutors were motivated in part by frustration with the sentences already given out in a scandal that has swept up an array of prominent parents accused of paying to cheat on college admissions tests or to bribe college coaches.

After authorities revealed the scandal in March, Huffman and roughly a dozen other parents quickly pleaded guilty. Their sentences, all less than what prosecutors had sought, have ranged from probation to five months in prison. Huffman, who acknowledged paying $15,000 to cheat on her daughter’s SAT, is scheduled to finish her prison camp sentence Sunday.

For weeks, prosecutors warned defense lawyers that they planned to bring new charges and advised defendants to agree to plead guilty if they wanted to avoid being included. With a deadline looming, four parents pleaded guilty Monday.

Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, were accused of paying $500,000 to get their two daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Giannulli, designated as recruits to the women’s crew team at the University of Southern California even though they were not qualified, ensuring their admission. USC said in a statement from the registrar Monday that the two were no longer enrolled; it declined to give any further information, citing student privacy laws.

Among new details revealed in court filings Tuesday, prosecutors said that Giannulli had at one point forwarded along to his accountant a $200,000 invoice connected to their older daughter’s admission to USC. Along with the invoice, prosecutors say, Giannulli wrote: “Good news my daughter … is in [U]SC … bad is I had to work the system.”

Hollywood gossip magazines have reported that Loughlin was increasingly worried about the case and regretted her not-guilty plea. A lawyer for Loughlin did not respond to a request for comment.

The parents who have pleaded not guilty in the case had previously been charged with money laundering conspiracy as well as conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud. On Tuesday, most of them, including Loughlin, were also charged with conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, which involves theft from or bribery of an agent of an organization that receives more than $10,000 in federal funds in a one-year period. All of those parents are accused of agreeing to pay bribes to get their children admitted to USC.

The federal programs bribery charge provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison. For any parents who are convicted, that charge would most likely lead to higher advisory sentencing guidelines ranges, potentially determined by how much each parent paid as part of the scheme. This would address a sore spot for the prosecutors, who have argued that the guidelines ranges for the fraud charges that Huffman and others pleaded guilty to should be determined by how much each parent paid — which would have led in some cases to ranges of two or more years in prison. But the judge who has been sentencing them has disagreed.

Still, given that judges regularly depart from sentencing guidelines, it is not clear how the added bribery charges would actually affect parents’ sentences, if any are convicted.

A lawyer for Robert Zangrillo, founder of a Miami-based investment firm, whom prosecutors have accused of paying $250,000 to have his daughter admitted to USC as a crew recruit, issued a statement criticizing the new charges against him. The lawyer, Martin Weinberg, has described Zangrillo as no different from other parents who make a donation to a university in the hopes of getting an advantage for their child in the admissions process.

“Donations that were received and welcomed by universities have never before been characterized as bribes,” Weinberg said. “This attempted and unprecedented expansion of federal bribery laws is unwarranted.”

Prosecutors also brought new fraud charges against Donna Heinel, a former senior associate athletic director at USC, and a handful of coaches and others who had previously been charged with racketeering conspiracy. Prosecutors have accused Heinel of taking bribes in exchange for falsely presenting applicants as athletes, facilitating their admission.

A lawyer for Heinel, Nina Marino, said Tuesday, “The zeal with which this U.S. attorney’s office strives to have long prison sentences hanging over these individuals’ heads is staggering.”

Amid Modest Sentences, Prosecutors Bring New Charges in Admissions Scandal

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As Felicity Huffman, the actress and parent who pleaded guilty in the sprawling college admissions scandal, neared the end of a two-week prison camp sentence, prosecutors Tuesday pressed new charges against other parents, including actress Lori Loughlin, who have fought the cases against them.

Huffman, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud for paying a consultant $15,000 to cheat on her daughter’s SAT exam, is serving her sentence at the Federal Correction Institution in Dublin, California, according to Kopp. She had originally been scheduled to begin serving her sentence Oct. 25.

Dublin is roughly 40 miles east of San Francisco. The Bureau of Prisons website describes the complex there as consisting of a low-security facility housing 1,052 female inmates and an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp with 175 more female inmates. Kopp originally said that Huffman was in the low-security facility but later corrected himself and said that she was in the camp.

Felicity Huffman Reports to Prison Camp in Admissions Case

Actress Felicity Huffman reported to a federal prison camp in the San Francisco Bay Area on Tuesday to begin serving a 14-day sentence in the college admissions scandal, according to a spokesman for her, Larry Kopp of the TASC Group.

In the end, a federal judge in Boston sentenced Huffman to 14 days in a federal prison Friday. She was the first parent to face punishment in a scheme in which nearly three dozen wealthy people are accused of using lies and bribes to smooth their children’s way into prestigious colleges.

Looming over Huffman’s sentencing were questions about fairness, and whether she and the other mostly white parents in the case would be treated more leniently than poor or nonwhite defendants accused of educational fraud. The issues were emerging in a case that has been seeped with questions of inequity — and well-to-do parents’ efforts not just to guard their advantages but to grab more.

The judge’s decision to impose a prison sentence on Huffman, whom prosecutors saw as one of the least culpable parents, made it more likely that any parents convicted in the case will face at least some prison time, even if the period is brief and largely symbolic.

In arguing that the parents in this case should go to prison, prosecutors had pointed to examples of defendants like Kelley Williams-Bolar, an African American single mother in Akron, Ohio, who was sentenced to five years in prison — a sentence later suspended to 10 days in jail, three years of probation and community service — for using her father’s address to get her children into a nearby suburban school district. They also pointed to a group of black public schoolteachers, principals and administrators in Atlanta, who were convicted in a conspiracy to cheat on state tests, some of whom were sentenced to as much as three years in prison.

“If a poor single mom from Akron who is actually trying to provide a better education for her kids goes to jail, there is no reason that a wealthy, privileged mother with all the legal means available to her should avoid that same fate,” Eric S. Rosen, the lead prosecutor in the case, said in court.

“If we believe in just punishment,” he added, “we should not put the Williams-Bolars in jail while letting the Huffmans go free.”

Huffman’s lawyer, Martin Murphy, argued that most comparable defendants were given probation rather than prison. And he said that, just as Huffman’s wealth and fame should not lead the judge to impose a lighter sentence, they should not lead her to impose a longer one, either. He had argued in a sentencing memorandum that a term of imprisonment was not needed as a deterrent in Huffman’s case because she had already suffered considerably, by being publicly shamed, seeing her acting career crater and facing the anger of both her daughters.

“It can’t be the case that Ms. Huffman should be treated more harshly because of her financial circumstances and her notoriety,” he said.

Huffman addressed the judge, Indira Talwani, reading from notes and frequently choking up as she said how deeply she regretted taking part in the cheating scheme in which she paid $15,000 to inflate her daughter’s test score.

She recalled driving to the school where her daughter was to take the SAT and — afterward and unbeknown to her daughter — where a proctor planned to illicitly correct the answers. At one point along the drive, as her daughter asked whether they could get ice cream after the test, Huffman remembered having second thoughts about her plan. She told the court, “I thought to myself, ‘Turn around, turn around, turn around.’” She paused as she choked back tears. “To my eternal shame,” she said, “I didn’t.”

She said that when she was later arrested and had to explain to her daughter what she had done, “She said to me, ‘I don’t know who you are anymore, Mom.’”

“I realize now with my mothering that love and truth must go hand in hand,” she told the judge, “and that my love coming at the expense of truth is not real love.”

Talwani also imposed a $30,000 fine, supervised release for a year and 250 hours of community service. Huffman was ordered to report in six weeks to a federal Bureau of Prisons facility that has yet to be chosen.

In a statement released by a spokesman after the hearing, Huffman said: “I accept the court’s decision today without reservation. I have always been prepared to accept whatever punishment Judge Talwani imposed. I broke the law. I have admitted that, and I pleaded guilty to this crime. There are no excuses or justifications for my actions. Period.”

Prosecutors have charged 51 people in the expansive admissions case, including coaches and others, and 15 of the 34 parents charged have pleaded guilty. In the cases of some other parents who have pleaded guilty, prosecutors are seeking as much as 15 months of incarceration.

They asked for a comparatively lighter sentence — one month — for Huffman in part, they said, because she paid less than many of the other parents and because she chose not to include her younger daughter in the scheme. Besides the cheating on tests, some parents are accused of conspiring to bribe college coaches to pass their children off as athletic recruits in sports they often did not play.

Huffman was not the only Hollywood celebrity charged in the case. Actress Lori Loughlin is accused of conspiring to use bribes to get her daughters admitted to the University of Southern California as recruits to the women’s crew team. She has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors had raised the cases of Williams-Bolar, the black mother from Ohio, and the Atlanta educators, to argue that fairness required sentencing Huffman and the other parents in this case to at least some period of incarceration.

But some defense lawyers involved in those cases questioned that logic.

David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, who represented Williams-Bolar in successfully seeking clemency in her case, said that there were indeed disparities in the justice system.

“When you are rich — and particularly if you’re rich and white in this country — there’s a different justice system,” he said. But, he added, “Sending Felicity Huffman to jail is not going to solve that problem.”

Similarly, lawyers who represented educators charged in the Atlanta test cheating scandal said that the sentences given to some of the defendants in that case were excessive.

“Our educators in our cheating scandal in Atlanta were way overprosecuted and way overpunished,” said Bob Rubin, who represents Dana Evans, a former principal, who was convicted of a racketeering charge and of making a false statement to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent. Evans was sentenced to one year in prison; her case is on appeal.

“My answer is not to give Felicity Huffman more but to give our clients less,” Rubin said.

Issues of equity seemed to be very much on Talwani’s mind.

She told Huffman that what had outraged people about the admissions scandal was not the revelation that something that was supposed to be a meritocracy was not really one. Everyone already knew that the admissions system was distorted by money and privilege, she said, with wealthy students having numerous advantages over poor ones, including better academic preparation, individualized tutoring and college counseling, access to fancy internships, and basics like food and stable housing.

People’s outrage, she told Huffman in the crowded courtroom, was “that in a system of that sort, in that context, that you took the step of obtaining one more advantage to put your child ahead of theirs.”

She suggested to Huffman that, in imposing a sentence, she was clearing the slate for her.

After serving her time, she said, Huffman could move forward and rebuild her life.

“After this, you’ve paid your dues,” she said. “I think without this sentence you would be looking at a future with the community around you asking why you had gotten away with this.”

Actress Gets 14-Day Sentence in College Admissions Fraud Scandal

BOSTON — Facing time in prison for her role in the nation’s largest college admissions scandal, actress Felicity Huffman grew tearful, her voice breaking as she told a courtroom that she wished she had never taken part in a scheme to inflate her daughter’s SAT score. Earlier, she sat silent and stoic as a prosecutor ticked off all the reasons probation would not be sufficient punishment.

Huffman’s sentence, which included a $30,000 fine, supervised release for a year and 250 hours of community service, was being closely watched as an indication of how harshly parents in this case would be punished. And it suggested that the judge, Indira Talwani, agreed with prosecutors that even a short term of imprisonment was necessary to send a message that wealthy parents would not get away with trying to steal admissions slots from more deserving students.

Huffman’s lawyers had argued for a sentence of probation. They said that prison was not needed as a deterrent in Huffman’s case because she had already suffered enough — being publicly shamed, seeing her acting career crater and incurring the anger of her family.

Even before the sentencing, questions were being raised about fairness and whether Huffman and the other defendants would receive lighter punishments than poor and nonwhite defendants convicted of similar crimes.

Huffman’s sentence was unlikely to silence those questions. Some observers had already dismissed the one month that prosecutors had requested as too short for what they viewed as a crime driven by greed and entitlement.

At the same time, lawyers for some black defendants who were given prison sentences for crimes involving educational fraud said that the solution to disparities in the justice system was not to send Huffman to prison for longer but to send fewer black defendants there.

Beyond Huffman’s case, the scheme included cheating on college entrance exams and bribing college coaches to designate students as recruits in sports that in most cases they did not play.

In a letter Huffman submitted to the court ahead of her sentencing, she described being motivated to take part in the cheating scheme by a mix of maternal devotion and fear. She wrote that her insecurity as a parent, which she said was amplified by having a daughter with learning disabilities, made her trust the college counselor she had hired and rely on his advice against her better judgment. The counselor, William Singer, whom prosecutors have described as the mastermind of the admissions scheme, has pleaded guilty to racketeering and other charges; he has not yet been sentenced.

After he had counseled Huffman’s daughter for nearly a year, Singer told Huffman that, unless her daughter’s SAT math score rose sharply, the performing arts schools she was aiming for would not even consider her, Huffman told the judge.

“I honestly didn’t and don’t care about my daughter going to a prestigious college,” Huffman wrote. “I just wanted to give her a shot at being considered for a program where her acting talent would be the deciding factor. This sounds hollow now, but, in my mind, I knew that her success or failure in theater or film wouldn’t depend on her math skills. I didn’t want my daughter to be prevented from getting a shot at auditioning and doing what she loves because she can’t do math.”

Prosecutors had argued that the parents involved needed to serve at least some time in prison, to show that wealthy people would not get away with corrupting the admissions system. At one point the prosecutors had indicated they would ask that Huffman face four months behind bars, but they lowered their request last week.

Prosecutors have charged 51 people in the expansive admissions case, including coaches and employees of Singer, and 15 of the 34 parents charged have pleaded guilty. In the cases of some other parents who have pleaded guilty in the case, prosecutors are seeking as much as 15 months of incarceration. They asked for a comparatively lighter sentence for Huffman in part, they said, because she paid less than many of the other parents and because she chose not to include her younger daughter in the scheme.

Other parents are scheduled to be sentenced in the coming weeks, many of them by Talwani. The likelihood that other defendants will get short sentences or probation increased slightly Friday when Talwani said, in a memorandum filed before Huffman’s sentencing, that the victims of the fraud — testing companies and the universities where coaches were bribed — had not suffered any financial harm that should affect the defendants’ sentencing guidelines. That means that all the parents before Talwani will likely be facing sentencing guidelines of zero to six months, though she noted in her memorandum that she can issue a sentence outside the guidelines.

In arguing for at least a brief period of incarceration, prosecutors had pointed to examples of educational fraud that had been punished with prison terms — in some cases, long ones. In court papers, they cited a case in which Atlanta public schoolteachers, principals and administrators were convicted in a conspiracy to cheat on state tests, and some were sentenced to as much as three years in prison; all of the defendants were black. In another case, an African American mother in Ohio, Kelley Williams-Bolar, was sentenced to five years in prison — a sentence later suspended to 10 days in jail, three years of probation and community service — for using her father’s address to get her children into a nearby suburban school district.

In light of examples like these, the prosecutors suggested, sentencing parents in this case to probation would invite accusations of unfairness and racial bias.

But some defense lawyers involved in those cases rejected suggestions that their clients’ cases should be used to argue that Huffman should be sent to prison.

“Our educators in our cheating scandal in Atlanta were way overprosecuted and way overpunished,” said Bob Rubin, who represents Dana Evans, a former principal, who was convicted of a racketeering charge and of making a false statement to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent. Evans was sentenced to one year in prison; her case is currently on appeal.

In fact, many of the 35 defendants charged in the Atlanta case pleaded guilty and received sentences of probation.

Sandy Wallack, who represented Dessa Curb, a special-education teacher who was found not guilty at trial, said Huffman’s case seemed more akin to the Atlanta defendants who had received probation because Huffman pleaded guilty and expressed contrition. He said that probation was probably an appropriate sentence.

Huffman Sentenced to 14 Days Behind Bars in College Admissions Scandal

Actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in prison for paying a college consultant $15,000 to inflate her daughter’s SAT score, becoming the first parent given a punishment in a sweeping scheme in which nearly three dozen wealthy parents are accused of using lies and bribes to smooth their children’s way into prestigious colleges.

Actress Felicity Huffman, who pleaded guilty to paying a consultant $15,000 to inflate her elder daughter’s SAT score, is facing less potential jail time — prosecutors are now recommending one month of incarceration — than many of the about three dozen parents accused of wrongdoing in the scheme.

But with her sentencing scheduled to come first, next week, it will represent an initial test of whether a federal judge believes that parents who acknowledged roles in cheating their children’s way into college should spend at least some time in jail.

“Some period of incarceration is the only meaningful sanction for these crimes,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed Friday for Huffman and 10 other parents who have pleaded guilty to felonies in the case.

The prosecutors are recommending one to 15 months of imprisonment for those other parents, some of whom helped arrange for cheating on their children’s standardized tests and others who helped conspire to bribe college coaches to designate their children as recruits in sports they did not play.

“Home confinement would be a penological joke,” the prosecutors wrote in their memorandum, “conjuring images of defendants padding around impressive homes waiting for the end of curfew.”

In a separate filing, Huffman’s lawyers argued that she should get no jail time but instead a year of probation, 250 hours of community service and a $20,000 fine. They laid out for the first time a detailed narrative of how she got involved, saying that the college consultant, William Singer, worked for her family for nearly a year — providing tutors for her older daughter and building Huffman’s trust — before he proposed the cheating scheme.

Then, in a meeting in 2017, Huffman’s defense team says, he told her that her daughter’s math scores were too low to be considered by the performing arts schools she dreamed of. So he offered the following service, as Huffman wrote in notes on her laptop: “Control the outcome of the SAT — 15 grand — get a proctor in the room with her and she gets the answer she needs to get.”

For six weeks, she agonized about the idea, Huffman wrote in a letter attached to her lawyers’ memorandum.

“I felt an urgency which built to a sense of panic that there was this huge obstacle in the way that needed to be fixed for my daughter’s sake,” she wrote. “As warped as this sounds now, I honestly began to feel that maybe I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do what Mr. Singer was suggesting.” Singer, whom prosecutors have described as the cheating scandal’s mastermind, has pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors; his sentence is not yet set.

Huffman wrote that she decided to go through with the cheating but that it haunted her. So while she considered doing the same thing for her younger daughter, she decided against it.

Even as prosecutors are arguing that the parents should go to jail, in some cases for more than a year, it appears increasingly likely that they will get short terms of imprisonment, or only probation.

For the first group of parents to be sentenced, which includes Huffman, federal probation officials have said that the sentencing guidelines are zero to six months. Prosecutors have strenuously disagreed with their reasoning, but if the judge ends up siding with the probation officials, the same guidelines would most likely apply to most of the parents who have pleaded guilty. The judge, Indira Talwani, has scheduled a hearing next week to air the dispute.

If the judge ultimately chooses to impose no jail time in the cases of the first parents to be sentenced, it would be a blow to prosecutors, who have said that wealthy parents ought to face significant penalties for a system of cheating that corrupted employees of elite universities and robbed hardworking students of admission slots. It could also have ramifications for the rest of the case, in which dozens more parents and coaches are still fighting charges.

In their memorandum, prosecutors argued that jail would be a particularly meaningful punishment for defendants who include a former chairman of an international law firm, a wealthy consultant on youth marketing, and Huffman, an Academy Award-nominated actress.

“For wrongdoing that is predicated on wealth and rationalized by a sense of privilege, incarceration is the only leveler,” the prosecutors wrote.

“To be clear — as reflected in the government’s sentencing recommendations — it is the fact of incarceration that matters more than its duration,” they continued. “With limited exceptions, the public interest does not require substantial prison terms for these parents.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts declined to comment.

Regardless of any jail time they receive, many parents have suffered serious consequences. They have lost work, seen their reputations damaged and become public symbols of arrogance and greed.

Huffman’s lawyers report in their memorandum that she has not received a single offer or audition since she was arrested. Her elder daughter, Sophia, has no college to attend, her lawyers say, because even schools that did not require SATs would not let her audition after her mother’s arrest.

Despite this, if many of the parents are sentenced to probation, the prosecutors would be disappointed, said Robert Fisher, a former federal prosecutor who is now a defense attorney at Nixon Peabody, which represents former Stanford sailing coach John Vandemoer, the first person sentenced in the conspiracy.

“That’s clearly not the result that they’re looking for,” he said. “They clearly want people to serve jail time.”

Vandemoer was sentenced to only a day in jail, which was deemed already served, and six months of home confinement.

Huffman’s lawyers submitted nearly 90 pages’ worth of letters from family members, friends and others who testified to her kindness and generosity. They also submitted “a partial list of events and causes Ms. Huffman has supported.”

The first letter is from her husband, actor William H. Macy. He was not charged in the case even though he was captured on some recordings by investigators, and references in the prosecutors’ criminal complaint suggested that he was aware of the plans to cheat.

Macy’s and Huffman’s letters offered a view into how the charges have affected at least one family.

In her letter, Huffman described Sophia asking her, “with tears streaming down her face, ‘Why didn’t you believe in me? Why didn’t you think I could do it on my own?’ ”

In his, Macy wrote that Sophia “still doesn’t like to sleep alone and has nightmares from the FBI agents waking her that morning” — the morning Huffman was arrested — “with guns drawn.”

He said Huffman had found a family therapist that they have seen, in various combinations, over the last several months. He writes of his wife: “She has kept all of us talking and when one of her daughters needs to scream at her, she takes it in and makes no excuses. She only loves them back.”

Prosecutors painted a less flattering portrait of Huffman, describing her as pursuing the cheating scheme despite the “staggering advantages” that she and her daughter already enjoyed as a result of her wealth and fame.

They described her as a hypocrite, drawing on a blog and parenting website Huffman maintained before her arrest, on which, they say, she cultivated and monetized “a public persona as a likable everywoman and trustworthy purveyor of parenting wisdom,” selling mugs and T-shirts with phrases like “Good Enough Mom.”

While on her blog she was “extolling the virtues of imperfection and the ‘potential of failure,’” the prosecutors write, “Huffman was paying corrupt testing officials to cheat on her daughter’s SAT, an effort that involved manipulating her own daughter along with everyone else.”

“In short,” they argue, “while her recent expressions of regret are commendable, in real time she profited from fundamental duplicity.”

Looming Over the College Admissions Case: Will Parents Like Felicity Huffman Get Jail?

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — With the first sentencings on the horizon for a group of wealthy parents accused of paying big sums to get their children into prestigious colleges by cheating, the legal drama has come down to a simple question: Will they serve any jail time?

Six months later, as the first set of parents are to be sentenced in the nation’s largest-ever college admissions prosecution, it appears that the penalties may in some cases be lighter than prosecutors had hoped. For the first group of parents to be sentenced, which includes actress Felicity Huffman, federal probation officials have said that the sentencing guidelines are zero to six months. That, legal experts said, opens up a significant possibility that these parents could get sentences of probation only — no jail time.

Huffman, who pleaded guilty to paying a consultant $15,000 to obtain an inflated score on her daughter’s SAT, is scheduled to be sentenced first, on Sept. 13. Prosecutors had said that they would recommend a sentence of four months in her case and that the guidelines were four to 10 months.

If the judge ultimately chooses to impose no jail time in the cases of the first three parents to be sentenced, it would be a blow to prosecutors, who have said that wealthy parents ought to face significant penalties for a system of cheating that corrupted employees of elite universities and robbed hardworking students of admission slots. It could also have ramifications for the rest of the case, in which dozens more parents and coaches are still fighting charges.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney for the district of Massachusetts declined to comment for this story.

But at the sentencing hearing of the first person to be sentenced in the conspiracy — a former Stanford sailing coach, who was ultimately sentenced to only a day in jail, which was deemed already served, and six months of home confinement — the lead prosecutor in the case, Eric S. Rosen, told the judge that anything short of a prison sentence would send the wrong message.

“Imagine if you are a parent willing to pay a bribe to get your son or daughter into school,” Rosen said. “If you’re only going to be given probation, why not take that risk?”

It is possible that the parents will face harsher sentences. Prosecutors strongly disagree with the way federal probation officials have calculated some of the parents’ violations under federal sentencing guidelines, and the judge, Indira Talwani, has scheduled a hearing next week to air the dispute.

The crux of the disagreement boils down to whether the victims of the admissions fraud — which prosecutors say were testing companies and the universities to which the students applied — were financially harmed by the scheme. Prosecutors have said that they were, pointing to costs like money spent on internal investigations at the colleges, salaries paid to corrupt employees and predicted declines in applications to schools with reputations tarnished by the scandal.

But probation officials have concluded that the testing companies and colleges suffered no financial loss. As a result, probation officials have said that the guidelines call for shorter sentences — and perhaps no jail time — even in the case of a parent who prosecutors had argued should receive 18 months.

Even if some parents end up getting only a few months of imprisonment, or probation, many will still have suffered serious consequences. They have lost work, seen their reputations damaged, and become public symbols of arrogance and greed. Some of their children have been dismissed from schools or rejected by them, and given the publicity the case has attracted, they may face steep odds in finding colleges that will accept them.

Despite this, if many of the parents end up being sentenced to probation, the prosecutors would be disappointed, said Robert Fisher, a former federal prosecutor and now a defense attorney at Nixon Peabody, who represents the Stanford sailing coach, John Vandemoer.

Daniel N. Marx, a defense attorney at Fick &amp; Marx, said that if many parents get probation, “I think that really calls into question the judgment of the U.S. attorney’s office in bringing the case and pursuing it so aggressively in the first place.

“They got a lot of media attention for this,” he said, “but ultimately no one really lost any money. This was not a bank robbery. This was not a stock fraud. This was not the Enron of the university world.”

But Mimi Rocah, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and now a distinguished fellow in criminal justice at Pace University, said that while prosecutors would no doubt be unhappy if many people involved got probation, it would not take away from the case.

Regardless of the sentences ultimately handed out, she said, the case made an impact by revealing how a college admissions system supposedly based on merit had in fact been corrupted by money, more blatantly and explicitly than anyone had imagined.

“It was definitely an aggressive case, and unusual, unique use of the criminal statutes — and I think it just kind of shows that the statutes aren’t really designed for this conduct, exactly,” Rocah said. “But that doesn’t meant that they shouldn’t try.”

Felicity Huffman to Be Among First Parents Sentenced in Admissions Scandal

When federal authorities announced charges against dozens of parents accused of paying big sums to get their children into prestigious colleges by cheating, they promised that the case would be a warning to others: If you try to use your wealth to lie and cheat your child’s way into college, you will get caught.

Close to 20 USC students are entering the fall semester not knowing whether they will be allowed to remain at the school or be expelled, as a university investigation into students tied to the scandal, in which dozens of parents were accused of taking part in a scheme to cheat on tests or of paying bribes to help their children get into elite colleges, drags into a sixth month.

Other students have been texting one another screenshots of Olivia Jade Giannulli, a one-time social media star who is caught up in the scandal, using a lewd hand gesture on Instagram amid reports that she is not coming back to USC. Her mother, actress Lori Loughlin, appeared in court on Tuesday for a hearing in connection to charges that she conspired to fraudulently get her daughters admitted to the school.

All the while, faculty members are complaining about USC’s handling of the case, saying that it has not been transparent about who knew about the fraudulent admissions. The university is fighting a subpoena from a parent charged in the case who is seeking several years of records about applicants who may have gotten a leg up because their parents donated to the school.

Almost half a year after prosecutors announced the sweeping prosecution over college admissions, much remains in flux. Joshua Ritter, a lawyer who is representing students who are under investigation by the university in connection with the case, said his clients were “in a complete state of limbo.”

“They’re renting their apartments and everything else, getting ready for school and they have no idea what action if any the university is going to take,” he said.

USC is more deeply involved than any other American university in the scandal, in which prosecutors have charged 51 people in connection with a scheme to cheat on college admissions exams and bribe college coaches to designate students as recruits despite their not being competitive athletes. Four USC athletics officials were charged with taking bribes, and more than half the parents charged in the case were accused of trying to bribe their children’s way into USC.

USC had said it would investigate 33 current students for possible admissions violations. But after university investigators conducted interviews in the spring, most of the students have heard nothing about their fates.

Asked about the slowness of the process, the university said in a statement, “This is a diligent, impartial process that gives each student the opportunity to submit evidence and witnesses in their defense.”

Fewer than half the students under investigation have been told of the university’s decision in their cases, according to a person with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity. According to this person, the decisions in those cases have ranged from the student being cleared to the student being expelled. Students can appeal the decisions, a process that one lawyer representing several students at USC said could take several months.

Several lawyers who are representing students being investigated by the university expressed frustration with the process and the delay.

Ritter said that the students he represents had sat down for interviews with investigators in April and since then, “We’ve kind of gone into a radio silence.”

The university is permitting students who are still under investigation to enroll in classes, but is preventing them from receiving their own transcripts, so even if they wanted to withdraw and apply to transfer to another institution, they could not, he said.

Most of the students and parents connected to the case have kept low public profiles. But Loughlin’s two daughters have lately reemerged on social media. Last month, they each wished their mother a happy birthday on Instagram, and Olivia Jade followed that post with the one featuring the crude gesture, apparently directed at media outlets that had published articles about her.

Loughlin and her daughters appeared on the cover of this week’s issue of People magazine, all of them wearing white. Inside, the three sat close together on a couch, their legs tucked under them, Loughlin holding one daughter’s hand and with her arm around the other.

Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, were each charged with conspiring to pay bribes to get their daughters admitted to USC as recruits to the crew team. They have pleaded not guilty.

They appeared in federal court in Boston on Tuesday for a hearing that addressed conflicts that could arise from their sharing lawyers, as well as other conflicts their lawyers might face. The lead prosecutor, Eric S. Rosen, expressed particular concern that the law firm of one of Giannulli’s lawyers also represents Davina Isackson, a parent who has pleaded guilty to conspiring to pay bribes to get her daughters admitted to USC and the University of California, Los Angeles, and who is cooperating with prosecutors.

Loughlin was notably more subdued than in a previous appearance in Boston federal court, when she smiled and waved at fans as she went into the courthouse, and signed autographs outside her hotel. On Tuesday, Loughlin and Giannulli entered and exited the courthouse through a back door, in an attempt to avoid a scrum of photographers positioned out front since morning. Loughlin, wearing a gray dress and cardigan, looked down and did not smile.

In the admissions scandal, some schools moved more quickly than USC to dismiss students connected to the case. Georgetown has dismissed two students. Stanford and Yale each rescinded a student’s admission.

It remains unclear where the students who are expelled from their schools will land. Hanna Stotland, an admissions consultant who said she had been hired by five families in the case to help their children get into a new school, said that she had represented students who had been expelled or suspended as a result of sexual misconduct allegations, and that students tied to the admissions case were “way, way, way tougher to place” than those students.

In some cases, she said, admissions officers seemed open to hearing her out about why they should give a student a chance. “Then they go talk to the higher-ups, and it’s a no go,” she said. She said her sense was that colleges were mostly afraid of the publicity they might attract by admitting a student connected to the case.

“There’s a risk that you’re going to get paparazzi in some cases tracking the kids down and associating this college with cheaters or criminals,” she said.

She said she was advising some families to consider sending their children to school abroad, where university admissions is based more purely on grades and test scores, and less on a holistic process like it is in the United States

“It’s not a solution for everyone,” she said. “Particularly, I think I can safely say that for some of my families now, where the family is in crisis and parents may be going to jail, that it’s not — some of the families feel that it’s not a good time for one or more siblings to be 5,000 miles away even if educationally that might be a good solution.”

Admissions Scandal Looms Over USC as New Year Begins

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Students are moving in, syllabuses are being handed out and freshmen are getting directions to the 24-hour Starbucks. But as a new school year begins at the University of Southern California, the nation’s largest-ever admissions fraud prosecution continues to roil the campus.

It is in lifeguards’ gazes as they scan the water.

It is in the three young men playing a game by the shoreline who do not swim out to retrieve their ball when it lands too far out in the surf.

It is in the panicked stampede out of the water when a seal swims by and someone on the beach mistakenly yells the word already hovering in the back of everyone’s mind: “Shark!”

It is feeling more than a little like Amity Island on the Cape this season.

Nearly a year ago, in September, a 26-year-old man named Arthur Medici died after he was bitten by a great white shark while boogie boarding on a beach in the Outer Cape town of Wellfleet.

There had not been a fatal shark attack in Massachusetts since 1936, but in recent years many people on the Cape had thought it was only a matter of time. Great white sharks had become increasingly prevalent along the Cape’s beaches, attracted by the expanding population of gray seals. A tourist had been bitten in 2012, and a month before Medici’s death, a doctor was bitten, surviving but requiring nine operations.

But if many people on the Cape, including local officials, had been able to ignore the shark problem or play it down, Medici’s death changed that. It has altered life for anyone who goes into the ocean and has set off intense debates over what should be done, from deploying buoys or drones that would detect sharks to culling the seal population.

It has also raised concerns about what will happen when there is another attack, which many expect there will be. Some people say they fear that eventually the Cape will become another Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean where swimming and surfing are severely restricted because of an abundance of shark attacks in its waters. Even without such a ban, some say, another serious attack could doom the Cape’s vitally important tourist economy.

“It hurts because you know it’s inevitable,” Marc Angelillo, a surfer and surf equipment salesman based in Orleans, a town in the Cape’s elbow, said of another attack. “We don’t have things in place. It’s just a matter of time, again.”

It is rare for sharks to attack humans. There were 66 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks in 2018, four of which were fatal, according to the International Shark Attack File by the University of Florida. Nearly half of those attacks occurred in the United States, and nearly a quarter of them in Florida.

But those statistics have not reduced the agitation on Cape Cod, where the saga that has unfolded has enough characters and subplots to fill out a “Jaws” reboot. There are the cautious town officials, wary of taking any measures to deter an attack that might give beachgoers a false sense of security and expose their towns to liability. There is the outspoken county commissioner, who has no formal role in managing beaches or wildlife but has fervently argued for killing sharks and seals.

Marine biologists and conservationists have been providing critical information to the towns, though some frustrated citizens deride them as “shark whisperers” who care more about animals than humans. Tourists have been dutifully going into the water no further than waist deep, as they have been advised, and exiting the water when a shark has been spotted, as has happened nearly once a day on a Cape beach this month.

And then there are the surfers. Their lives have been upended since Medici’s death, which made it no longer possible to ignore the risks of surfing on the Cape. Surfers are in a kind of collective state of mourning, some simmering with anger at what they perceive as a slow government response and others wrestling with whether they can still find joy in surfing the Cape’s waves.

“It kind of infects my mind,” Timothy Schirmang, a 35-year-old surfer from Provincetown, said, explaining why he would never use Sharktivity, an app created by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy to send alerts of confirmed shark sightings.

Kate Taylor

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