LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) - Federal prosecutors argued on Monday that Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, deserve prison time for cheating to get their daughters into the University of Southern California.
In a sentencing memo, the U.S. Attorney's Office urged the judge to stick to the terms of a plea agreement signed in May and sentence Giannulli to five months and Loughlin to two months.
The couple are due to be sentenced on Friday. Each pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, admitting that they had hired consultant William "Rick" Singer and paid $500,000 to get their daughters admitted to the school as fake crew recruits.
The prosecution argued that the agreed sentences are consistent with those given to other defendants in the sprawling case, and reflect the seriousness of the offense.
"The crime Giannulli and Loughlin committed was serious," the prosecutors argued. "Over the course of two years, they engaged twice in Singer's fraudulent scheme. They involved both their daughters in the fraud, directing them to pose in staged photographs for use in fake athletic profiles and instructing one daughter how to conceal the scheme from her high school counselor."
The prosecutors also argued that Giannulli deserves a harsher sentence than Loughlin because he played the more active role in the fraud, "brazenly lying" to a school counselor about his daughter's athletic abilities in order to cover up the scheme.
"Loughlin took a less active role, but was nonetheless fully complicit, eagerly enlisting Singer a second time for her younger daughter, and coaching her daughter not to 'say too much' to her high school's legitimate college counselor, lest he catch on to their fraud," the prosecutors wrote.