Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin among 50 charged in college entrance cheating scandal
Aux Features Felicity HuffmanA large-scale college entry scam is afoot, according to Boston authorities and the FBI, and it includes two of the unlikeliest alleged co-conspirators: Aunt Becky and Lynette Scavo.
Full House actress Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, primarily known for her starring role in Desperate Housewives, are among at least 50 people charged in a college entrance-exam cheating scheme, according to recently unsealed court documents. Per ABC News, the indictment illustrates an alleged scheme that focused on getting students admitted to elite universities by recruiting them for athletic teams (regardless of their athletic abilities and/or experience) and helping potential students cheat on their college exams. Loughlin and Huffman have been charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.
According to documents related to the investigation (FBI code name: “Varsity Blues”), Huffman and her husband, actor William H. Macy,“made a purported charitable contribution of $15,000 … to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her eldest daughter.” They also allege that she initially pursued the same route for her younger daughter, but had a change of heart.
The same documents say that Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, “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.”
Federal agents also recorded phone calls involving the celebrities and a cooperating witness, according to the complaint, and obtained incriminating emails from Loughlin. Neither camp has released a statement at this time, and at the moment there’s no clear indication that the schools themselves were involved in any potentially illegal activities. The list of charged individuals also includes college coaches and “a slew of chief executive officers,” per ABC News.
UPDATE, 12:15 p.m.: Huffman is in federal custody, according to NBC News reporter Andrew Blankstein; Loughlin was not home when officials came by, and there is a warrant out for her arrest.
352 Comments
In just a few years there won’t be a single celebrity without a criminal record. Maybe Tom Hanks.
Alex P. Keaton once filed charges for drunken assault, so…
Tell me about it, there’s nothing worse than a Vanilla Extract Drunk.
Fucker should’ve let Uncle Ned drink vanilla extract in peace!
Eh, close enough. https://www.tmz.com/2016/03/28/tom-hanks-rita-wilson-son-chet-sued-car-accident/
It’s always the goodie two shoes quiet ones you have to worry the most about.
Hanks only has one red shoe.
Mr. Hanks disposes of the bodies at a pig farm he owns through three layers of shell companies.He is a monster. Not an idiot.
https://www.theonion.com/world-doesnt-even-know-who-to-admire-anymore-after-tom-1819574580
Was The Return Of Bruno really that bad?
Something’s gotta come out about what he did to that dog on the set of Turner & Hooch
Or maybe Otm Shank.Otm Shank.
YES! India’s answer to Brian Dennehy!
Tom Banks allegedly raped a 13 year old girl in Michigan in the 80s or 90s – Sarah Ruth Ashcraft
LMAO! Its a real Lifetime movie! Think Lori will play herself in the movie?This is freaking hilarious.
Well, according to the latest Hollywood rumor mill, she will be played by the charming Ms. Alicia Witt.
From Full House to the Big House, a Lifetime original movie.
The movie will be called “A Deadly Matriculation.”
“The Perfect S.A.T. Coach”
She’s probably now just reminiscing about the days when she was known almost only for her abs.
What about Felicity in Desperate Parents?
Hey, if Oliver Thomas can play himself on Treme…
When did Felicity Huffman marry Dan Duryea?
When did William H. Macy marry Ellen Pompeo?
And will Nancy ever admit to Howard how she really feels? Find out next week!!!
Other than being vaguely blonde and standing next to William H. Macy, I would not have guessed from the picture that was the actress who played Dana Whittaker on Sports Night.
That’s what plastic surgery will do for you. Won’t improve the inside though.
Back when the Anglo met the Saxon, or so the legend goes.
After Nina Hartley?
Poor William H Macy. Several news outlets only referred to “Huffman and her husband”
Isn’t the lede getting buried here? WTF happened to her face? Not even the same person.
Coaches for college sports teams are already among the highest paid college employees, if not the highest in most cases. College football regularly fucks its players over. Student loans are a complete scam, but for most people, they are the only way into decent schools. Now we find out that overpaid coaches are taking bribes to get rich underachievers into colleges their they couldn’t get into on merit, and taking one of the only viable paths into college for a low income family away? Fuck, man…
Are you implying that low-income families do not produce children of high intelligence, only athletes?
He implies, you infer. Gentleman, to evil.
He said one of their paths. Although, Harvard will give you a free ride if you’re poor but have the grades.
Honestly, Smithers, I don’t know why Harvard even bothers to show up. They barely even won!
but you may not stay there until graduation. poor kids dot know the system
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/for-many-poor-students-the-ivy-league-is-culture-shock/2019/03/01/fd63ae78-2e27-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html
Vanderbilt is like that too, now. If you qualify to get in they will make sure you can go regardless of finances.
Same with MIT – scholarships are purely need-based, nothing else.
That’s true at most top schools, but at least in the late 80’s when I entered college, the “need” assessment was woefully inaccurate.
Probably still pretty inaccurate. They don’t do athletic scholarships, though, even for sports that they’ve got good programs for (which, they do have a couple – mostly the sports that involve weapons, like fencing and rifle team).
Maybe not the Ivies, but I do understand that some lower division teams have ways of skirting the rules there.
Oh, I think the Ivies do do athletic scholarships – I just specifically meant that MIT doesn’t do them.
Harvard’s obscene endowment should give everyone admitted a free ride.
Dude, they’re buying up Cambridge and Allston. Real estate costs $$$!!!
Could purchase all of Boston proper with their endowment
No. He said “taking one of the only viable paths into college for a low income family away”
So athletics is ONE of the only viable paths. High academic ability is another. The problem is that the students and parents defrauding everyone clearly are neither high academics nor great athletes but are taking up spots that could otherwise be given.
You need better bait.
As a first gen smart poor kid. I would not have known how to get into ivy league. There is more to playing the college game than smarts.
Intelligence isn’t the barrier to entry, achievement is. And the way the system is set up, it’s harder for low-income students to achieve many of the expected benchmarks.
Correct, working 5-6 days a week is not seen as important as sports and clubs. SAT/ACT prep classes are expensive. and so many other factors.
Low-income families can’t afford tuition and other related costs at elite schools, no matter how intelligent the child is.
Most of the top schools have aid based scholarships. At some of them a majority get aid.
And yet a lot of low income students still can’t afford to go. Institutional barriers aren’t as easy to overcome just by “having intelligence.”
Need based scholarships still rely on what the government says you or your parents can afford to pay, which for my family when I was going to college was ridiculously high, but this was back in the late 80’s.
Most elite private schools have need blind admissions- so if you get in they may pay all or much of your fees. But, you have to know about that, have great grades, etc. You also won’t likely make the cut off if your family is solidly middle class.
Even the highly intelligent child of a low-income family has far more barriers to admission, not least that they’re likely to have received an inferior education from a system designed to warehouse them rather than teaching them.
Here’s an idea: Let’s all fight about the topic! We’ll introduce a whole new way to use comments sections!!
Aaaaaaaannnd… GO!
There are few options for kids who are intelligent but poor, who often can bust their asses and still not get access to aid because of systemic failings, while a talented but poor athlete is more likely to be accepted because colleges actively look for them. Colleges actively look for talented athletes in disadvantaged communities, but poor smart kids can practically bust the doors down for every opportunity they can find and still get passed over.
Troll.
No, but (1) there are many more athletic scholarships out there than academic ones, (2) kids don’t get into school based on intelligence, but rather based on performance. Some kids go to shitty schools in the first place. Poor kids have less opportunity to do much outside of school as the parents don’t have the time or money for extracurricular activities and the school may not have much in the way of music or art (many top schools want something besides academics or test scores).
Our media culture pushes that narrative, yes.I’ll say it, an academic scholarship is hands-down better than an athletic one. You don’t have to do shit!
Plus college athletics scholarships + lowered academic entry requirements are already tailor-made for rich white students who can afford to play Lacrosse or Crew and can’t get into the college traditionally. Reconfirms my decision to have gone to an undergrad without traditional sports teams (that way you know pretty much everyone is there for the academic program):
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/college-sports-benefits-white-students/573688/
Uhh, the article says 65% of Ivy League athletes are white… but 77% of the US is white…So… Ivy League athletes are discriminating AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE!?
Look at the non-major sports in the US [the ones other than Football and Basketball really] and I believe the NCAA is an affirmative action program for whites.
According to the Deadspin version of this article, it appears the bribed coaches were not men’s football or basketball coaches but coaches for tennis, soccer, volleyball, and similar sports. Loughlin bribed a Crew coach according to this article. Top coaches in those sports might make $100k and most are probably around $40k. Bribes of a few thousand dollars could be very tempting to people making that kind of money.
I bet, especially when the head football coach is pulling 4 mil a year and constantly hits on everybody’s wives.
This article? https://deadspin.com/here-are-all-the-incredible-details-from-the-college-ad-1833236579
Pretty clearly mentions (women’s) basketball and football.
There is no women’s football to my knowledge, unless you mean soccer which I covered. There is only one mention of football and it does not appear to have been successful although the article is not clear on that. Women’s basketball coaches make more than many other coaches, but still not nearly as much as Men’s basketball coaches.From an old NYT article: For Division I basketball, the median salary for coaches of a men’s team in 2010 was $329,300, nearly twice that of coaches for women’s teams, who had a median of $171,600. Over the past four years, the median pay of men’s head coaches increased by 40 percent compared with 28 percent for women’s coaches.
So it is better, but not in the millions and still in a range where a $10,000 bribe is a big deal. Especially if they are trying to get the child into a school without a big basketball program where the coach is probably under the median.
So many people jumped in to tell me that the overpaid football and basketball coaches are actually blameless, as if that mattered to me in the slightest.
The basketball kid (5’5″) was a boy. It appears that the conduit there was not the basketball and football coaches tho.
Quick question:What the heck is Crew!?
Rowing or sculling.This:
Ah! Boatsmanship!
How high does the bribe have to be for a coach to give an athletic scholarship to someone who’s not an athlete?If you’re going to commit federal crimes and NCAA recruiting violations, at least get someone who will help you win before you go to jail and have to vacate a season’s worth of victories.
I got into medical school even though I’ve been dead for 17 years.
And you’re one of the best cadavers we’ve ever seen.
I credit a rigorous regime of push-ups. And cocaine.
They aren’t bribing them for scholarships, they are bribing them to get them listed as “recruited athletes”, which comes with lower academic admission requirements, sometimes much lower.The coaches that are being charged are for non-revenue (read: not football or basketball) sports like swimming, tennis, lacrosse, etc. Typically sports that already skew heavily towards affluent white students. They also don’t really fall under the same oversight as the big money sports, so shit like this can get covered up easier.
Aha. That makes much more sense than dressing out some snot-nosed 90-pound twerp at linebacker just because daddy wrote a check.
Though, it would be a lot funnier your way. I’d love to see Jaidenn get trotted out there and get absolutely smashed.
The Deadspin article on this has notes for a kid going in as a kicker/punter at USC despite his high school not having a football team! Also the guy mentions another kid he got in as a 145 pounder admitted as a long snapper.
So the big money sports were involved too.
Yeah, and at PAC-12 schools, too, not some Div. II cupcake.
Nothing in this case constitutes an NCAA recruiting violation.
I know the NCAA’s big thing is making sure students don’t get paid (hell, coaches already make millions), but I can’t imagine they look highly upon coaches taking cash to offer athletic scholarships to unqualified students.If no NCAA rules were broken, then this is further proof that the body exists solely for the purposed of fucking student athletes.
I very much envy your apparent lack of familiarity with the NCAA.
Not a scholarship, just designated a recruit. Like, “hey, we’re recruiting this player for the naked underwater bingo team,” which ensures their acceptance. Then, once they’re in, oops, not playing. But a college isn’t going to rescind the acceptance, because that would imply that the recruited player wouldn’t have been accepted otherwise, and we all KNOW colleges only accept students for their academics.
From the articles online most of the coaches taking bribes were in sports that are not considered high profile; crew, tennis. They probably don’t make nearly as much as coaches for programs like basketball or football and probably felt they were being woefully underpaid. This probably made them more susceptible to bribery.
These are also sports played by white wealthy kids.
It’s so messed up. I was truly fortunate in that I was able to get out of undergrad and grad without debt, thanks to a combination of scholarships, work-study, graduate fellowships and savings. I shudder as I think of all the poor people who weren’t as fortunate, and had to take out student loans. I’m no economist, and this is going purely based on instinct, and nothing else, but I think the next economic crisis will hit when all those loans start to come due, and a generation will be unable to pay them.
I managed to get my MA without going into debt–but student debt is bad enough here in Canada. I seriously continue to always be shocked when I see how much post-secondary education is in the US
A little critical reading would show that the “overpaid coaches” you reference have literally nothing to do with this. These are the coaches of non-revenue sports and their salaries are fractions of the ones you’re talking about.Scumbags either way, but not the same people.
I’d like to say I felt bad that I accidentally accused the wrong people of the wrong fraud.
You don’t know what coaches were involved. I doubt the crew coach is that highly paid.
I’m just glad that we live in a Meritocracy, where parents are free to pay as much as they want to cheat their dim offspring’s way into the Ivy League!
Coaches are the highest paid employee in many states. It’s not just students who get financially fleeced – the top-heavy salaries of university administrations means those that teach aren’t exactly seeing that money. Sure, full-time professors (who often teach grad courses, have Summers off and the more than occasional sabbatical semester) can pull in a decent salary at an average school to pay back those ginormous students loans that got them there. However, Instructors who teach a huge amount of undergrad classes make very little and are often barred from teaching more than 1 course at another university. At some point, Higher Ed got stupid.
The “overpaid” coaches, as you put it, aren’t the ones susceptible to bribery. Roster spots on money making sports like football & basket ball really are merit based.
Is there a listing for how much these coaches are paid? I think the non-football/basketball/baseball coaches aren’t paid as much as the head coaches for those sports.
No, that’s been the common refrain under my comment: That it was all the non-revenue sports that were to blame, and the head tennis coach for USC doesn’t make 4.5 mil a year, so maybe they’ll be more susceptible to bribes. This is true. Here’s the thing though: I don’t care. College sports obviously have far too much control over academia, and that shit needs to stop. Toot suite.
Need a safe space?
And any money sports bring in never actually go to the school itself. The NCAA is one big exploitation machine.
I was always under the impression that if you had money then you could go to USC. There was no need to bribe anyone because the outrageous tuition was essentially the bribe.
U$C, as a Cal ex of mine used to say.
University of Spoiled Children !
How did your ex pronounce that?
U-CHACHING-C
University of Spoiled Children
University of Spoiled Children.
How does one actually say U$C?ETA: Apologies for not first reading others’ comments.
But all the really cool aging Hollywood couples are into bribing. Like, hello!
If you’re dumber than a bag of hammers, it helps if your parents first make a large donation to the elite university they want you to get into. Just ask Jared Kushner.
Apparently Lori Laughlin and her husband are also dumb, because seriously, give the $500k to the university and get your name on something and get your kid in and it’s technically on the level (somehow).
$500k isn’t thaatt much. Kushner’s dad donated five times the amount.Maybe $2mil+ is the fee for legal “donation” to let some kid in and $500k is the ok we’ll fudge the details but this isn’t technically legal price.
Right? How dumb are Lori Laughlin’s kids that it took 500K to get them in but Felicity Huffman got her kid in for 15k?
For Huffman they had a fake proctor edit her scores and they abused the system to get disability accommodations, then the proctor edited stuff.
Laughlin, they did a whole song and dance.
I find that odd, because not that long ago it had a reputation for being the loser school in southern California. I remember in a George Lucas biography I read that USC was the only place that would take him.
It looks like USC is easier to get into than ARIZONA STATE!
Loser school, really? It has arguably one of the best or at least one of the most prestigious film schools in the country. Also, bad example to use George Lucas who attended that school a half a century ago, things have changed a bit (for better or worse).
My entire point was that up until 25-30 years ago USC was considered a loser school, not that it is one now.
It’s definitely the lesser school. They’ve spent a LOT of money to buy their way up the US News rankings. But it’s not hard to get into. I got into USC on the first try even though we figured out I applied to the wrong program during an admissions interview.
Paying $500k for USC is just plain dumb. For that amount of bribe money, I’d expect a much higher payout.
Seriously. Half a million? For *USC*? Not even top 20? I mean, it’s a fine school, but..,
University of Second Choice
— a UCLA grad
I thought UCLA always called them ‘University of Spoiled Children’.My friend who went to UCLA said the USC kids used to have bumper stickers on their cars that said ‘My Maid Went to UCLA’. Even my friend thought was pretty funny.
Haha. They did.. someone mentioned it upthread
These “new money” people are a joke. You can get your kid into ANY school legally by just calling their development office and paying for a new building or naming rights.
Yale could use an international airport…
*y6el
Semper Fudge
I mean, you aren’t really wrong. I remember back during senior year I got wait-listed at my number 1 choice along with another kid in my class. I had better grades and extracurricular activities, as well as test scores than him (close to 400 higher on the SAT). Couple weeks later, his dad makes a “sizeable donation” to the school and he gets in and I don’t.
True but some of these parents were paying for anonymity. They didn’t want their peers or anyone else saying “the only reason Johnny got in was because of the building donation”. They probably didn’t want their kid to think or believe that. Some of these kids had no idea and believed they got in on their own merit. Imagine the awkward silence at Easter brunch this year after learning your parents had to bribe your way into college.
Which is the only difference between old money and new! Old money doesn’t care about such perceptions- buying a new wing for Alma Mater’s science lab is a noble thing! If Richie Rich Jr. happens to be applying at the same time and gets in, so much the better!
The reason they have to take this route is because the only thing Huffman and Loughlin have is money. They might be famous, but they aren’t Waltons. Nobody is going to go down if The Lady That Played Aunt Becky On Full House, Remember Full House doesn’t get what she wants.
Remind me: who are the Waltons, again?
Richest people in the world. They own a chain of stores.
Oh, I thought those were owned by the Mart family.
It was a joint venture, until the Waltons drove the Marts out using shady business practices. Still, the Marts bounced back by partnering with the Kay family.
Didn’t work out for them in the long term, though… Unless they let the Kresge’s buy them out long ago.
John Boy, Mary Ellen, you know, the Waltons.
I truly did think of the show when I read “the Waltons,” and thought, “Hmm, what a strange comparison to make, but okay.”
I’d have appreciated the thought, but I’d have probably preferred them just giving me the money and letting me go to a lower tier school.
As someone who works in fundraising I can say that you are definitely not at all wrong.
Their real crime was that the wrong people got a cut.
nailed it
Yup
Don’t elite colleges WANT those kids? Especially knowing that these successful and well-known actors can bring in other money, donate a wing of a building, and their children can otherwise attract other star-struck applicants? … I would think colleges would be courting THEM. Why on Earth would they need to go through all of this nonsense?
They might not have the academic chops.
You donate a building, your kid goes there, end of story. That is the legal way to bribe the school on the up and up. Of course, donating a building probably involves much more money.
Is Laura Laughling well known? I mean, look at how I spelled her name!
Fun fact: You spell it right, but she spells it wrong.
She was in The New Kids. That’s the only thing I know her for.
No, Secret Admirer. That’s the only thing to know her for.
Because elite colleges also love to brag about how they only accept students scoring in the 99.99th percentile so they work hard to pad their stats. I wouldn’t be surprised if the universities were previously aware of this little scheme and casually looked the other way. “Sure he misspelled his own name on the application and screenshotted a wikipedia page for his essay, but it says here he mysteriously scored a 1600 on the SATs so that’s good enough for me!”
These are the merely rich, who cannot afford that scale of donation to the institution. They have to fall back on bribing even littler people.
Yeah, I mean it’s embarrassing that the parents had zero faith in their children getting in–but in the US and especially the UK it is true that lots of the best schools give an easy entrance to people who come from famous family, have good lineage, have a family history with the school… I can’t imagine being relatively well off and relatively famous and doing this.
Reminds me of an old episode of Daria when even the Dad admits that college acceptance is usually about people’s ability to pay.
Which is why it’s so weird that they wasted $500K on bribes. They could have bought a wing of a building with that amount of money and gotten the kids in that way.
Someone has to give money to pay for things.. maybe some of that cash went to someone who needed financial aid?
Sounds more like it actually went into the pockets of the people taking the bribes.
These kids must be really, really dumb or lazy because, yes, school want and need rich kids.
Is any one really star struck by Lori Loughlin? And colleges report the SAT scores and GPAs and stuff of their admitted class, so it wouldn’t do to have even famous kids come in with a 100 SAT score and a 10 ACT score because it makes them look less academically rigorous which lowers their rankings, no matter how famous the parents are.
I thought this was called capitalism?
The rich always find ways to get their angel babies into high class colleges.
Where they not rich enough to buy new campus buildings or pad the endowments?
I blame Uncle Jesse.
Have mercy.
Cut. It. Out.
How rude!
How rude!
You got it dude.
That moonshine ain’t gonna run itself(*2 dukes of Hazzard references in less than a week…have mercy!)
Cue to the typically oblivious Trumper imbeciles railing against celebrities and college scams.
Would you like to cue them, or should I? Look, I’m gonna say what we’re all thinking: Thanks, Obama!
Shhh…it’s a trap! They’ll try to comment only to be immediately grayed out.
A trap, eh? Maude, eh?
It’s funny how Kushner didn’t intially get into Harvard …
“These poor, rich white kids coulda got in the normal way if it weren’t for the Affirmative Action!”
You don’t have to be a Trump supporter to hate celebrities and their influence on society. Hatred of them, if anything, is a unifying force.
If they’d been smart, these Hollywood elites would have gotten their kids into Trump university. Not only would they have gotten in cheaper, they’d get some free steaks.
Or Big Macs
Wait a minute, Doc! This is getting HEAVY! I really mean that. Sorry if it sounded sarcastic.
I went to college with Meat Loaf’s daughter.Did Meat throw his weight around to get her in?Probably not, it wasn’t an especially fancy school, particularly if you were rich.
Was her name Olive Loaf?
Pearl Aday, actually, now married to Scott Ian of Anthrax.
I just finished reading Scott Ian’s autobiography “I’m The Man” and learned who she was and how they met. Crazy book with great stories. Call him Meat, not Mr. Loaf.
I used to eat a pearl a day. It got super expensive.
My Fabergé egg addiction ruined my once lucrative career as a Jazz saxophonist.
So you’re saying he’d do anything for love (of his daughter) but he wouldn’t do that right?
He wrote a very persuasive letter, and agreed to do some fundraising for them, but stopped short of paying for her to get in. But two out of three ain’t bad.
College athletics are already a joke. This is going to make it worse. The NCAA sucks
This is really only tangentially related to college athletics, and it’s sports like tennis and swimming. So while NCAA athletics are a joke in and of themselves, this isn’t really on them so much as individual coaches of lower-tier sports.
Whether they donated a few thousand for a new wing or paid to have someone else take the test for their kid the result is still the same, so it’s kind of interesting that people are so upset about the latter. There are less overtly illegal, more socially acceptable ways for buying your children into college, dammit! For my part I take it as given that children of celebrities had their Ivy League degrees purchased for them and would ironically respect them more if I found out they went to Michigan State or wherever.
Oh, Don’t cross Sparty. Michigan State is a good school!! (but I get what you mean. You mean public universities).
Yeah, no disrespect to MSU. I’m currently earning a PhD at a public university and earned my bachelors at a good but thoroughly obscure liberal arts college.
Oddly enough, I previously assumed USC was a public university, but apparently not.
Madonna’s daughter is currently at Michigan, but I don’t respect her any more.
Schools only accept about 8% of legacies including major donors. So a new wing isn’t a guarantee. A new wing + decent scores, that’s different. Huffman’s daughter only got a 1400 on her SAT. That’s still low for an Ivy so they were presumably doing other things as well.
USC isn’t an Ivy.
Loughlin’s daughter is at USC. Other schools in the scam including schools Sophia Huffman applied to include Yale and Georgetown.
Ah gotcha.
Wait, you can be on a team if you have bone spurs?
Only the Polo team.
How come I’m not seeing any headlines on this story that include William H. Macy? I understand that both of these women are well known, but its weird that their equally culpable — and charged — husbands aren’t getting the same attention.
Where are you getting the info that their husbands were charged? I’m not saying that’s not true, but I’ve read 3 news stories on this, and none of them said that. I think Macy is a big enough star that his name would be first if he had been charged. (His agent insists on top billing.)
“According to documents related to the investigation (FBI code name: “Varsity Blues”), Huffman and her husband, actor William H. Macy,“made a purported charitable contribution of $15,000 … to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her eldest daughter.””
And again, where in there does it say he was charged? I get that he probably broke the law, but that is not the same as getting charged with a crime. The headline specifically lists people who were “charged” with a crime, and it seems that he might not have been (probably, as other commenters suggested, because the feds had more evidence on his wife and insufficient evidence to convict Macy).
I’m forgetting where I saw it (maybe a Huffpo story referencing another article) but I read that both Macy and Lori Loughlin’s fashion designer husband (who I hadn’t heard of before) were involved in the bribery with their spouses.
Depends on the charge. This is only the first round of charges. It’s all lined out in the NPR article as to which charges were announced today.
I think that’s odd too. The famous mom’s seem to have more incriminating evidence against them, but that’s likely because all the normal work revolving around kids tends to fall to mom’s anyway. It def sounds like both Macy and Mossimo were involved, but neither of them have been arrested yet and the media is only focusing on the famous women, not their famous husbands- which isn’t great.
I believe Lori’s fashion designer husband was charged, but William H. Macy was not. He clearly knew what was going on but they probably are only charging people where its a slam dunk.
He’s mentioned in the article and as part of the investigation, yes it is indeed curious. . Maybe he has better agents with more hush money?
It’s almost like he is shameless.
Most likely his signature wasn’t on anything.
I read an article saying that they had a cooperating witness that had recorded calls with Felicity Huffman specifically, so maybe they have more evidence involving her. Just a guess.
Maybe she wrote the check, therefore she’s the one who committed mail fraud?
You’re always ruining these arguments with your simple logic. Darn you!
Soory, eh?
They’ve just reached Bill Macy for comment:
They were interviewing him and he just drove off in a car right off the lot! He fled the scene!
He told Felicity that this was supposed to be a no-rough-stuff-type deal!
He’s fleein’ the innerview, he’s fleein’ the innerview!
You just know that someone’s going in a wood chipper for this.
Felicity Huffman exchanged emails with “Cooperating Witness – 1″ in the indictment. I believe his name is not directly linked to it for that reason. He may well have known and cooperated with it, but she’s the one that their is evidence of.
William H Macy wasn’t arrested, Huffman was.
He wasn’t arrested…yet.
How do you know he’s equally culpable?
I am assuming because the FBI stated in documents that both Huffman and Macy were involved in the case. Not definitive, I know, but suggestive.
he is considered a “witness” in the tmz article.
They only have direct evidence connecting William H. Macy to a plot for their second daughter, for whom they never followed through. The evidence for the bribery and fraud actually committed for their first daughter only implicates Felicity Huffman.
That makes sense, thanks.
*$500,000?!*No kid is worth that much effort. And if you’re already comfortable spending that much gd money… do it publicly as a donation and get all the perks that come with it.
No kidding. I can get you a kid for about 20,000. And a toe for much less.
How much for a kid’s toe?
Ask for a price check in our juniors’ department.
With or without nail polish?
Our spring colors came in just this week!
For this next round of Mad Libs I need two celebrities, a number between 1 and 100 and a crime
Jim Cavaziel and Fran Drescher commit mail fraud!
I would absolutely believe there was a movie made between 1996 and 1999 starring Jim Cavaziel and Fran Drescher called Male Fraud.
Ellen PageDonald Trump69 (nice!)Drunk and Disorderly conduct.And…go.
Steve-O and Morrissey arrested over theft of Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.
Montel Williams pay day lenders, oh.
Drew Carey and Jim Carrey rob the grave of Harry Caray while armed, charged with 2 counts of unlawful carry while carrying a Caray while Carey and Carrey
Peter Falk and Pete Davidson. 98. Bank Robbery.
I bet it’s real easy to rob a bank with a baby strapped to your chest. Even Colombo couldn’t crack that one.
Barefoot Contessa and Johnny Rotten2 1/3 (possibly cups)Ripping tags off of hotel mattresses, repurposing them and selling them on Etsy
When I first saw this headline, I assumed it would involve Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin.
Ellen Degeneres
Oprah Winfrey74
washing fish in a non-fish faucet at a national park
You are allowed to drink from a fish-faucet, though. But you’d probably rather not.
Tom Hanks and Will Smith star in 47 counts of tampering with the mail!
Queen Elizabeth, Donald Trump, 69, anything in Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict.
Hulk Hogan and Paul Reubens commit treason.
Professor Plum, in the Conservatory, with the lead pipe!What are we doing?
Danny McBride and Noam Chomsky.55.Illegal disposal of a refrigerator without first removing the door.
A very American story.
RELEASE NICKY AND ALEX’S TRANSCRIPTSIMPEACH MICHELLE
To be fair to Aunt Becky, Nicky and Alex never came off as so bright. Their father was a musician after all.
.
Did they also pay Kurt Vonnegut to write their kids’ papers?
“… and another thing, Vonnegut! I’m gonna stop payment on the check! Fuck me? Hey, Kurt, can you read lips, FUCK YOU! Next time I’ll call Robert Ludlum!”
And apparently in most cases, the kids themselves were unaware of what their parents were doing. One parent was recorded as saying to the bribe taker that, after he got her kid into USC, could he cure cancer and broker peace in the Middle East? Ouch.
They tried to indict William H. Macy, but he fled the interview.
“I’m cooperating here”
Not the half of Filliam H. Muffman I’d’ve expected in an NCAA scandal
Why can’t these folks just do what most rich people who have underachieving kids do…send them to Arizona State ?
I remember my rich friend’s underachieving older sister picking Arizona State because there were jacuzzis in the brochure.
Haha this is all-too real for me: I went to University of Arizona with Nicole Ritchie. She lasted half a semester.
I can only imagine their kids will be even more humiliated over this. Most rich parents just pull strings or pony up money by giving to a schools endowment or building fund to get you in. But having to cheat on SAT’s or pretend to play a sport simply because you were so dumb your famous rich parents couldn’t pull any strings at all!!! Now that is embarrassing. What’s even worse is some of the parents paid to have test scores doctored behind their kid’s back. Man that is going to make Thanksgiving awkwarrrrd.
I work in college admissions planning and everything is very content driven now – GPA, SAT/ACT. If you learn the content, you can do well on the test. If you’re going to pay $500,000 to fake a sports team affiliation, just put that money toward test prep. Your kid would absolutely get a 1500+ SAT score. Even the $15,000 Felicity Huffman paid would do it.
“Well maybe we wouldn’t have had to doctor your goddamn scores if you could fucking spell ‘archipelago’!”
Erstwhile, on Fargo…
Ostensibly, on Full House…
Is it just me or does this seem really stupid? I mean unless your kid is so dumb they can’t get in anywhere, why not save your $250,000 and have your kid go to the school not quite as good as USC that they can get into. Then use some of that cash to pay for tutors, extra credit style trips/exchanges. By the time your kid graduates they would probably be better off starting any career than most of the kids who went to the elite schools. Especially considering they would have no debt, probably better grades (what with tutors and not having to work) plus their parents connections. Hell put the 250 grand in some kind of retirement trust and they could do whatever they wanted with their degree and be set for life.
It saddens me that the go-to role is Lynette Scavo and not Dana Whittaker for Felicity Huffman
I can’t believe Lynette would do this! This is totally a Bree crime.
I had this exact thought. Not proud of that, since this really is a gross abuse of wealth that hurts less well connected students.
So is William H. Macy also being charged? Cause it sounds like he was part of this scam as well.
(knock, knock) Mr. Macy? Open up, police) (knock, knock) (muffled; “Just a sec!”) (knock knock) (“Mr. Macy?”) (muffled: “Just a sec!”) (policeman nods) (manager opens door with key) (police bust in) (William H. Macy caught trying to escape through bathroom window) (WMH dragged onto bed by police) (“mmmyyyeaaahheaahhyaaaaaiiiyyyaaaahhhh!”)
In the indictment, there are emails that Huffman exchanged with the person who is cooperating with the FBI. It doesn’t appear they have a direct link to William H. Macy in writing or recorded. She was doing the leg work on it.
They can only directly connect him to the planning for their second daughter but they never actually did it for her.
Law enforcement is worried that if William H. Macy goes to jail, the Shoveler won’t show up to stop crimes. Others have pointed out that they’re clearly two different people, as Macy has a beard and the Shoveler does not.
The entire cast of Full House should have been charged decades ago for impersonating a sitcom.
Her dating plan was stupid and ruined Sports Night. Ok, so I guess that was actually Sorkin’s fault, but I just felt like mentioning that.
LoL University of San Diego? University of Texas?A bribe to get into Yale or Stanford, I get. G-town, Wake Forrest, UCLA… ok I guess. But these other schools? You’re wealthy, white, and American in the 21st Century. You’re literally one of the most privileged people to have ever lived in human history. And with every advantage given to you, you can’t get into University of San Diego on your own merits?
Despite this scandal, the standards of Felicity Huffman’s Booty Academy are still beyond reproach, right?
So that’s what Frank spent the check on.
I can’t see that picture without thinking of the couple name that someone (probably an AV Club commentor) came up with: Wellicity H. Muffman
It’s Filliam H. Muffman, and it’s an old Colbert Report joke.
I never heard that one from Colbert, this was something a commentor came up with that always stuck in my brain.
Bill Macy is in the indictment but only named as Felicity’s spouse. Why isn’t he under arrest????
He’s not named in this round of the indictments. More charges are pending and additional defendants could be named.
Maybe because he didn’t do it, or because they have no evidence he participated.
Read the indictment. He is referred to as spouse and was on the calls with the test fixer.
Still doesn’t mean they have evidence to charge him. They might offer Huffman leniency if she gives up more names, in which case Macy may be looking at indictment.
If they were relying on Huffman’s testimony against Macy they’ve got a problem; a person can’t be forced to testify against their husband/wife or (IIRC) agree to do so unless the SO waives spousal privilege.
Yea I don’t think it’s a likely eventuality.
No.
Wow, Lori. That wasn’t very Rad of you.
Deeeeep cut. Well done.
So rich white people took action to affirm their children’s entrance into colleges?
All right, all right, I admit it! I shouldn’t have been admitted to Felicity Huffman’s Booty Academy!
Was William H Macy not indicted along with them? I’m pretty positive the complaint said it was both of them.
When it comes to their own kids, there are no socialists in foxholes. Or something.
I’m not the only one who wants to see a low speed chase with Lori Laughlin, where John Stamos is playing the AC Cowlings role, right? I can’t be the only one.
They’re gonna put out a record called ‘White Bronco Blues’.
I’d always assumed that the wealthy just paid the way in for their kids regardless of their actual scholastic ability.
That’s how it has ALWAYS worked. I mean, just look at Al Gore or George W. Bush….
Elephant in the room: how much did Macy know?
Isn’t this how the plot of Billy Madison started?
Always weird when the big charge is mail fraud. It seems like bribery is the crime being committed, but I guess they have a stronger case if they focus on the means through which it was done, rather than, you know, the actual crime.
You do NOT fuck with the Postal Inspectors.
I work in admissions planning and for $500,000, Lori Loughlin’s kid could have just gotten the grades and the test scores needed to get in. Everything is content driven now and if you have that much money to put into resources, you can do that. Same for the $15,000 Felicity Huffman spent.Felicity Huffman’s emails in this scheme are VERY damning. She knew exactly what she was doing and knew that they were getting a proctor. There’s no way that she thought she was getting a different service.
Paying for tutors requires your child to cooperate and learn/take a test. Their way they just pay and the kid is in. Not sure why so many people find that confusing.
I understand that fine, but at least in Huffman’s case, the implication seems to be that only the test was the issue — there’s no talk about her GPA or pretending that she was being recruited for sports. They managed to get double time over two days approved by the College Board. Reading the indictment, they are only worried about the test and she had not even taken it previously. I don’t actually think it would have taken that much work and for $15,000 you can readily get a quality, private tutor.
They certainly should have gone that route, but depending on where she wanted to go, it might not have been enough. Apparently her PSAT score was about 1000- it’s average, but even over a couple of years, that’s a lot to make up. The tests are coachable, but within a range. A 1000 score suggests that she would need to do a lot of fundamental work to get over 1200. The math and grammar could be done with real dedication, but the reading would be harder to boost.
Does this surprise anyone? Our government, culture and media have been whipsawed for years by bowel-loosening terror the mediocre children of the rich feel at the prospect of their own darlings competing with talented poor people.
And all this time, we thought that he was the Shameless one!
The (bird)seeds of an idea are sown:
Love that Tennesee Tophat.
This is shameless!! Shameless, I say!!!
This isn’t over. If these assholes were willing to bribe and cheat to get their kids INTO college, then they were certainly willing to bribe and cheat to help them graduate. The teaching staffs at these schools should be worried.
Ahem..*clears throat*Tax the rich; they are the only group who has for centuries hurt the populace. The sooner all races, colors, creeds and economic classes aside from the wealthy realize this and stop fighting with one another, we’ll be OK as a species. The meritocracy, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and other tyrannizing symbols are to keep you paying the taxes they do not EVER pay to support their materialistic narcissism.Thank you
This is typical rich assholes doing typical rich asshole things.
Water is wet.
A couple of things spring to mind here.1. I’m Canadian, and I’m a faculty member at a Canadian university. Our system just doesn’t work like this at all. Standards aren’t lower for athletes (I find that mind boggling) and legal donations don’t help you get in to school. It’s based (almost) entirely on your final year of high school marks. No standardized testing is done. In Ontario (the province I live in) all applications for university run through a single agency. You submit your name, you pick universities and programs, and the Province sends the schools your high school marks. That’s it. Oh and the idea of ‘legacies’ is as foreign as umm, I dunno, not having health insurance or something……2. OK, if these kids weren’t doing well enough to get into these universities, one can imagine that they would struggle. So, what was next, bribing, or attempting to bribe, profs?3. I find the USA weird on many levels, but the tertiary education system is one of the weirdest things about your country.
Our system may not work the same, but at least one Canadian was trying to work the US system:https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouver-businessman-david-sidoo-charged-in-u-s-college-entrance-scandal
I don’t see what’s so wrong about paying for your child’s fake education.
Full House? More like Big House, amirite? Up top.
Dad, no.
Hi no, I’m dad.
Daaaaaaaad, you’re so embarrassiiiiiiiiiiiiing
Shut up and say hi to your new mom.Kids, this is Typhani.
Like many, I suspect, I didn’t pay attention to this story when it broke this morning because it was reported kind of tepidly… but over the next few hours it became jaw-dropping… Now I’m really thinking this might be end up being known as a scandal that majorly undermined the perception of our society as a meritocracy. What I find so galling about this is that if these families had all this money they could’ve easily hired tutors and academic coaches and whatnot. There’s a whole industry available to people with money who want their children to do better with aptitude tests and college admissions… but that way does require at least some fucking nominal bit of actual effort on the student’s part. Guess this way was just easier.
The last presidential election didn’t already do that?
The last 240 years didn’t already do that?
Now I’m really thinking this might be end up being known as a scandal that majorly undermined the perception of our society as a meritocracy.I just wish people would stop wildly overvaluing ivy league schools. They are nice, but not the end-all and be-all of higher education. Hiring public school grads instead of private could be the new virtuous fad, kind of like rescuing a dog.
I’m hearing that William H. Macy is also being questioned by authorities.
Oh man, are they going to have to retire the Felicity Huffman episodes of BoJack Horseman now?
Hey the children of the wealthy have so few advantages these days. People are making too big a deal about this.
Boy oh boy, the next season of AMERICAN CRIME is gonna pop! Pop, I tell you!
Huffman’s husband was asked to provide documentation to the authorities in regard to his daughter’s university admission process, but all the faxes seemed to have blurry numbers…
So I guess the next step is for them to complete the cycle and land their kids a role in some movie or television show and then act like they did it all on their own.
I think this story is interesting and important, also fantastically overblown, I thought Wolf Blitzer was going to have a coronary. (I only switch to Wolf because I hate Chuck Todd even more.)My huge regret to observe is that Felicity Huffman is the top figurehead of this story. The most famous, even though her husband William Macy isn’t indicted, though he’s named as SPOUSE in the court filings. This sucks, I always liked them as a couple, and I still will. This scam deserves to be exposed, but she and Macy only paid $15,ooo hoping to get their kid an advantage. Not saying that’s okay, but it’s not the half-million other names on the list of 50 paid, venture capitalists and the like. She’s just the most famous one, so she’s the name and figurehead of this scandal, and I think it’s a bit unfair and must be horrid. Not saying she didn’t do anything wrong, just her name is in headlines and she was arrested at her house because of her fame, as the client of this guy selling access. Again, why not Macy too?I liked Felicity Huffman not because of Desperate Housewives, but she made a fine indie film, Transamerica in 2005, about a transgender parent. (Almost a decade before Transparent.) It was very well-received and moving and well-played, she was very good in it. Of course, today it could never be made, there would be a firestorm of “controversy” because Felicity Huffman is not transgender. Anyway, far, far richer people did crazier things and gave greater amounts in this scheme, Felicity Huffman being the figurehead of the vast scandal seems weird and oversized. Did they really have to come and arrest her at her house? Physically take her like a violent criminal? They could have indicted and served her without such displays meant for publicity. $15, 000 bucks to some huckster? Okay.
I understand your complaints but there are good reasons to charge her – this scam is apparently fairly pervasive and that’s a big problem for society. If this were a bunch of unknowns it might not land. With felicity, this gets press and this makes people think twice going forward. Maybe people don’t try to bribe or accept bribes in future scams. Why Felicity and not William? Two guesses – 1. There was more solid evidence for Felicity so they went after her and/or 2. The prosecutor agreed with you and didn’t want to go after both parents. As a matter of public service, I think this approach was wise. It’s the fact that we love Felicity that made it a good idea to charge her. This scandal is bigger than any one person.
This is what happens when you have enough money to pay bribes, but not enough to donate a library.
Lori really isn’t as Rad as it has been implied in the past. I can’t believe classic 80s BMX titles lied to me.
Who is that in the pic with Bill Macy, because that doesn’t look like Felicity Huffman
I know this is something that’s probably been going on for years, but doesn’t this devalue the education of these institutions?
Seriously. Fuck these assholes.~ A guy who put himself through a Ph.D program part-time while also working three jobs because he was turned down for a scholarship everytime he applied for one.
Is there a reason all news outlets are only mentioning Felicity Huffman and not William H. Macy in their headlines?
Thorton Mellon did it bigger and better.
Lori lookin’ rough in that pic.
The UK has a slightly different, but still unfair, system. The biggest part of it is our “Public” schools (actually expensive and private – for ages 10 to 18 approx.). They offer a damn fine education – for a price, and assuming your intent is to get into Oxford or Cambridge. Hence the very noticeable trend of what a friend described to me as “Oxbridge graduates educated beyond their intellect.”
So did they already know their kids wouldn’t or couldn’t get in, and then they did the bribe, or did they just suspect their kids wouldn’t get in so they did the bribe prophylactically? I don’t know how being rich and white works.
I wonder how Frank Gallagher would feel about this.