Lori Loughlin and her husband, disgraced fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, are headed to jail. Three months after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges for their roles in the national college admissions scandal, Lori, 56, and Mossimo, 57, learned their fate on Aug. 21. For Mossimo, that means prison. The presiding judge accepted his plea agreement, sentencing him to five months in prison. He will also have to pay a $250,000 fine and serve 250 hours of community service.
Moss’s wife will learn her fate later in the day. While addressing the virtual courtroom, Moss expressed his ‘regret’ over his involvement in the scandal. “I deeply regret the harm that my actions have caused my daughters, my wife and others… I take full responsibility for my conduct. I am ready to accept the consequences and move forward with the lessons I’ve learned from this experience.”
In May, Lori and her husband pled guilty to allegations that they paid $500k as part of a scheme to get their two daughters – Olivia Jade, 20, and Isabella Rose, 21, — admitted into the University of Southern California. Days before their sentencing, federal prosecutors filed a sentencing memo, requesting that Lori get two months in prison, a $150,000 fine, and 100 hours of community service, according to NBC News. Prosecutors recommended that Moss, who was “the “was the more active participant in the scheme,” should get a harsher sentence.
“The crime Giannulli and Loughlin committed was serious,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin O’Connell in the memo, according to NBC News. “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.” Whether or not Mossimo or Lori will complete these requested prison sentences in an actual prison remains to be seen. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen many high-profile criminals – Tekashi 6ix9ine, Michael Cohen, etc. – serve their sentences under house arrest. As Mossimo waits to find out where he’s going to spend the rest of 2020, here’s what you need to know:
1. Moss pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Considering Mossimo was looking at spending years in prison, doing a few months behind bars may be viewed as a relief. In addition to the fraud charges, he and Lori were also hit with money laundering charges, which carry a maximum of up to 20 years behind bars. Ultimately, Mossimo agreed to plead guilty to “to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud.”
2. He is a fashion designer. Born in Los Angeles to parents of Italian descent, Mossimo created his eponymous mid-range American clothing company in 1986. The brand rose to success “by blending its surf, sport, urban and street heritage into a contemporary fashion brand with a broad and credible appeal,” according to its website (h/t Heavy.com). The brand went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996 and was once valued at $275 million. In 2000, Mossimo signed a multi-product licensing deal with Target, and Mossimo became a prominent brand there for nearly two decades. He ultimately sold the brand to the Iconix Brand Group in 2006.
3. He also admitted to lying to his parents about being a USC student. In a 2016 interview with The Hundreds fashion blog, Mossimo said that he lied to his parents about attending the University of Southern California and used the tuition money to start his company. “SC was expensive, so that was how I was starting my company. I used all that cash,” he said, revealing that he falsified report cards, and got his father to fork over the money with fake tuition bills.
“I used to have hundreds of thousands of cash in my top drawer in my fraternity house,” said Mossimo, about how he handled basic screen printing jobs for campus organizations. “And I was like, ‘This is kind of too easy. I need a bigger platform. If I had a bigger account base, I could really kill it.’ ”
4. Mossimo met Lori in 1995. Lori and Moss were dating for about two years when they eloped in 1997, just two days before Thanksgiving Day. “I was having dinner with Candace Cameron Bure and Marilu Henner, and you know, Marilu has that incredible memory,” Lori told Entertainment Tonight in 2018. “Somehow we started talking about my elopement and I said, ‘Yeah, we got up on Thanksgiving morning’ … We had Moss’ best friend and a minister meet us, and we got married at sunrise, and then we went to Thanksgiving dinner and we told everybody.”
“Moss and I had both been married before, so we thought, ‘Well, it didn’t really work out well for us the first time around, so maybe we’ll elope and see how it goes and tell people,’ ”she added. “We had talked about doing a wedding and we just thought, ‘Let’s get up and let’s go do it.'”
5. He has a son from a prior marriage. In addition to Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose, Mossimo is the father of Gianni Gene Giannulli, founder of the breakfast protein company, The Smart Co., according to The Hollywood Reporter.