The disaster that is Lori Loughlin’s life as of late continues to unfold like a slow-motion train wreck with the latest news being that she and her husband face new and additional charges around the college admissions scandal that they’ve been embroiled in since earlier this year.
Lori and her husband Mossimo Giannulli were arrested this past March as they were caught in the dragnet set by federal investigators as part of “Operation Varsity Blues”, exposing at least fifty-one people who conspired to facilitate entrances into some of the nation’s top universities by inflating their childrens’ college admissions test scores and faking membership in certain athletic groups – such as crew in the case of Lori and Mossimo ‘s daughters.
Why it’s not already enough to be wealthy and able to send your children to whatever decent school will accept them (Lori and Mossimo have an estimated net worth of around $90 million) is anyone’s guess. Why the feds so voraciously went after this particular crime would take another wild guess considering that there must certainly be bigger fish to fry out there than wealthy families paying exorbitant sums of money to cheat their childrens’ way into colleges.
The most bizarre aspect of this federal operation – which also entangled Desperate Housewives actress Felicity Huffman – is that whilst other defendants (such as Huffman) took responsibility and plead to the charge as would be expected from any normal human being, Loughlin and Mossimo plead not guilty… Not only that, but whenever Loughlin first showed up to court she appeared as if she was there for a promotion of one of her movies – to the extent of even posing for pictures with fans and signing autographs. Walking around with a joker smile in Boston as you appear in court to answer to a federal indictment just doesn’t seem like sane behavior. Pleading not guilty to federal charges whilst everyone else involved is pleading guilty seems somewhat ill-advised as well since the feds don’t play around with things like state prosecutors might.
What Lori apparently did not know about our federal court system is that the prosecutors don’t play anything but hard ball. This isn’t state court where things are plead down and significant deals are cut for pleading guilty… In federal court, the prosecutors EXPECT you to plead guilty and not waste their time with a trial, so they can move on to the next case and continue upping their conviction rates. A lot of these prosecutors are looking for a career in politics later or a federal judgeship. Federal prosecutors are usually very intelligent and ambitious individuals that are NOT trying to be made a fool out of by Aunt Becky.
In federal court if you don’t plead guilty to the charges at hand, the prosecutors will seek the absolute maximum penalties allowed by federal law which is usually up to twenty years per federal felony and another twenty for each additional count. This is a pretty stiff threat for someone charged with even just one count of one felony, and the potential years start to stack up very quickly as the feds seek convictions on multiple charges and counts. Someone with just two counts on one charge is looking at forty years! Forty is an amazing potential possibility for someone who might plead guilty to the same set of charges and only get probation. The feds want guilty pleas, and they make it very painful if they don’t get them.
Reality didn’t apparently start to set in for Lori until she and Mossimo were hit with additional charges in late October. This is all part of the federal game, continuing to stack the deck against defendants and pressuring them with the potential of spending the rest of their lives in federal prison – which again, is nothing like its state counterpart. In the federal system you can expect to do a clean (and astonishing) eighty-seven percent of your sentence whereas with state convictions usually inmates serve much lower percentages such as fifty percent or even less in a lot of cases.
What’s obvious is that Lori is no longer looking as chipper and smiley as she was once was now that she is starting to realize the depth levels of the shit that she and her husband are currently in. What’s not obvious? How she continues to plead not guilty including with regards to the new charges…Aunt Becky must still be living in Full House.
Update – 05-21-20:
It looks like the game is finally up for Lori and reality has set in – 14 months later than it should’ve. The charades have apparently come to an end and when faced with either the full weight of the Federal legal system or a plea deal… Lori and Mossimo have taken the deal…
Saying it like it is.