Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli have pleaded not guilty to the latest bribery charges filed against them in the college admissions scandal, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Loughlin and Giannulli were slapped with new charges last week, including conspiring to commit fraud, money laundering and federal program bribery. They were two of 11 parents charged last week in a new indictment last week.
Loughlin and Giannulli have been accused of paying $500,000 in bribes so that their daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli, could be crew team recruits for the University of Southern California. The couple pleaded not guilty to those initial charges back in April.
The entire list of charges against the couple include conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud; conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery; conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Federal prosecutors have hoped to use these new charges to convince the parents to flip their pleas in the case, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The new charges don’t indicate that any new crimes had been committed. Instead, it signals that Loughlin’s husband Giannulli had emailed his accountant back in April 2017 about an invoice that he received from William “Rick” Singer — the mastermind of the college admissions scandal, as the Deseret News reported last month.
The couple allegedly paid $250,000 to make sure their daughter was a recruited team crew star.
“Good news my daughter ... is in [U]SC,” Giannulli wrote to his accountant, according to the indictment, as the Deseret News reported. “Bad is I had to work the system.”
Loughlin was scheduled for an arraignment on Nov. 20 at 2:30 p.m. According to the Associated Press, Loughlin’s team waived their rights to the arraignment.
On Jan. 17, 2020, her team will have a status conference, which is not required to attend.