Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli agreed to plead guilty in the college admissions scandal, creating a possible troubling future for her celebrity status, an expert says.
Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, agreed to plead guilty in the college admissions scandal Thursday morning. The couple had been charged with paying $500,000 in bribes so their daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli, could be crew team recruits for the University of Southern California.
Loughlin will be sentenced to two months in prison, a $150,000 fine and two years of supervised released with 100 hours of community service, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.
Giannulli will be sentenced to five months in prison, a $250,000 fine and two years supervised release with 250 hours of community service, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.
Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5W Public Relations and crisis management mogul who has worked with Sean “Diddy” Combs, Snoop Dogg and Nick Cannon in the past, said in a statement to the Deseret News that the guilty plea news could ruin Loughlin’s celebrity status.
“Her decision to agree to plead guilty might be the right move legally. However, it will make it harder for her to win back the court of public opinion,” he said. “Whatever will happen from this point on will have a pretty bad effect on her future as a celebrity.”
The guilty plea won’t help the couple’s status, either, he said.
Loughlin and her husband “might have lost the public trust forever,” he said. “Stakes are getting increasingly higher. This is bringing her case to a whole new level. There is no point of return.”
But this isn’t the end for her career, he said. Loughlin will continue to see fans celebrate her, which they’ve done since the scandal first broke.
“I still believe that people might empathize with the motive behind her alleged actions. However, by the looks of it, a lot of that time might be spent in prison and she will lose her celebrity status very soon.”
Experts have wondered for more than a year now about what this could mean for Loughlin’s future as an actress. Longtime Hollywood crisis manager Howard Bragman told me in a phone interview Thursday that Loughlin will need to do an interview on television to start gaining respect back from the population.
“She’s gonna have to be humble. If she continues to fight it and say, ‘Oh, I don’t think we were wrong,’ it’s not going to play well for her in the court of public opinion I don’t believe,” he said.
Bragman said Loughlin has to bank on the court room approving her guilty plea. He said the couple has already made PR mistakes and they have to be cautious with how they handle the future.
“it’s certainly the beginning of a new era,” he said.
He added, “Their goal is to get over. The goal is, they realize that they’re not gonna win this in the court of law, so they’ve got to move on.”