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| © John Tlumacki Actress Lori Loughlin left Moakley Federal Court last August. |
By Travis Andersen, The Boston Globe
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday blasted an effort by Hollywood star Lori Loughlin and several other parents charged in the “Varsity Blues” college bribery case to have their indictment dismissed, calling the request a “smokescreen” meant to obscure their unlawful conduct.
Prosecutors made the assertions in their written opposition, filed in US District Court in Boston, to the defendants’ motion to dismiss the indictment or, in the alternative, suppress certain evidence.
Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, are among several parents charged with multiple crimes for allegedly paying bribes to get their children into selective colleges as fake athletic recruits. They’ve pleaded not guilty.
The defendants last month filed their dismissal motion, asserting prosecutors withheld evidence from the scheme’s admitted ringleader, William “Rick” Singer, indicating Singer told parents their payments were legitimate donations to school athletic programs.
In Wednesday’s filing, the feds pushed back hard.
“The defendants’ core allegations of misconduct are premised on a straw man: that this case is only about bribery. It is not,” prosecutors wrote. “The defendants are charged with conspiring to engage in a single, sweeping scheme to gain admission for their children to college by, among other things, lying about their academic and athletic qualifications so that complicit coaches, induced by bribes styled as ‘donations’ to their programs, could purport to recruit them as elite athletes.”
In the case of Loughlin and her husband, prosecutors wrote, Singer helped get both their daughters into USC as phony crew recruits. The university confirmed last fall that the daughters are no longer enrolled.
In August 2016, prosecutors said, Singer told Loughlin and her spouse that he would “create a coxswain profile” for their older daughter and that “[i]t would probably help to get a picture with her on an ERG [indoor rowing machine] in workout clothes like a real athlete too.”
The daughter did not row competitively, prosecutors said, but Giannulli responded via email, "Fantastic. Will get all.” Following the daughter’s provisional admission to USC as a bogus recruit, the feds said, Singer directed Giannulli via email to send a $50,000 check to a former school athletics official, now charged in connection with the case, with the check made out to USC Athletics.
When Giannulli asked if he should categorize the check as a donation for accounting purposes, Singer replied, “Yes,” prosecutors wrote. The couple later made additional payments totaling $400,000 to Singer’s sham charity as purported donations after the daughters were formally accepted, prosecutors allege.
In late 2018, when Singer was cooperating with the FBI, he had a secretly recorded phone conversation with Loughlin in which he told her the IRS was auditing his charity, but “nothing has been said about the girls, your donations helping the girls get into USC to do crew even though they didn’t do crew,” prosecutors wrote.
Loughlin, prosecutors said, replied, "So we just – so we just have to say we made a donation to your foundation and that’s it, end of story?” Singer said, "That is correct,” prosecutors wrote.
“The gravamen of the defendants’ motion is their contention that the government fabricated evidence that they understood their payments to be illicit ‘bribes’ going ‘to the coaches’ rather than legitimate ‘donations’ ‘to the university,’ and then sought to withhold evidence of that fact from them,” prosecutors wrote. “But that contention is flatly untrue – it is belied by the allegations in the indictment and the evidence in this case – and it doesn’t even make logical sense.”
A representative of Loughlin and Giannulli’s legal team didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment Thursday.
The defense said in last month’s dismissal motion that notes kept by Singer show federal agents engineered “a sham . . . in an effort to ‘entrap’ Defendants and ‘nail’ them ‘at all costs,’ ” and that prosecutors hid those notes from defense attorneys.
The defendants say at least two federal prosecutors saw Singer’s notes in October 2018, but “the prosecution buried this evidence and repeatedly misrepresented to Defendants and the Court that it had fully complied with its” legal obligations.
The disclosure of Singer’s notes should have been made no later than 30 days after indictment under court rules, the lawyers said.
In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors conceded they should have disclosed Singer’s notes in a more timely manner but argued that the defendants, who aren’t scheduled to go to trial until October at the earliest, haven’t suffered any unfair prejudice.
“Moreover, the notes are just 47 pages long and, of those, the defendants contend that only a few lines are exculpatory,” the feds wrote.
Globe correspondent Jeremy C. Fox contributed to this report.
See more at The Boston Globe
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday blasted an effort by Hollywood star Lori Loughlin and several other parents charged in the “Varsity Blues” college bribery case to have their indictment dismissed, calling the request a “smokescreen” meant to obscure their unlawful conduct.
Prosecutors made the assertions in their written opposition, filed in US District Court in Boston, to the defendants’ motion to dismiss the indictment or, in the alternative, suppress certain evidence.
Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, are among several parents charged with multiple crimes for allegedly paying bribes to get their children into selective colleges as fake athletic recruits. They’ve pleaded not guilty.
The defendants last month filed their dismissal motion, asserting prosecutors withheld evidence from the scheme’s admitted ringleader, William “Rick” Singer, indicating Singer told parents their payments were legitimate donations to school athletic programs.
In Wednesday’s filing, the feds pushed back hard.
“The defendants’ core allegations of misconduct are premised on a straw man: that this case is only about bribery. It is not,” prosecutors wrote. “The defendants are charged with conspiring to engage in a single, sweeping scheme to gain admission for their children to college by, among other things, lying about their academic and athletic qualifications so that complicit coaches, induced by bribes styled as ‘donations’ to their programs, could purport to recruit them as elite athletes.”
In the case of Loughlin and her husband, prosecutors wrote, Singer helped get both their daughters into USC as phony crew recruits. The university confirmed last fall that the daughters are no longer enrolled.
In August 2016, prosecutors said, Singer told Loughlin and her spouse that he would “create a coxswain profile” for their older daughter and that “[i]t would probably help to get a picture with her on an ERG [indoor rowing machine] in workout clothes like a real athlete too.”
The daughter did not row competitively, prosecutors said, but Giannulli responded via email, "Fantastic. Will get all.” Following the daughter’s provisional admission to USC as a bogus recruit, the feds said, Singer directed Giannulli via email to send a $50,000 check to a former school athletics official, now charged in connection with the case, with the check made out to USC Athletics.
When Giannulli asked if he should categorize the check as a donation for accounting purposes, Singer replied, “Yes,” prosecutors wrote. The couple later made additional payments totaling $400,000 to Singer’s sham charity as purported donations after the daughters were formally accepted, prosecutors allege.
In late 2018, when Singer was cooperating with the FBI, he had a secretly recorded phone conversation with Loughlin in which he told her the IRS was auditing his charity, but “nothing has been said about the girls, your donations helping the girls get into USC to do crew even though they didn’t do crew,” prosecutors wrote.
Loughlin, prosecutors said, replied, "So we just – so we just have to say we made a donation to your foundation and that’s it, end of story?” Singer said, "That is correct,” prosecutors wrote.
“The gravamen of the defendants’ motion is their contention that the government fabricated evidence that they understood their payments to be illicit ‘bribes’ going ‘to the coaches’ rather than legitimate ‘donations’ ‘to the university,’ and then sought to withhold evidence of that fact from them,” prosecutors wrote. “But that contention is flatly untrue – it is belied by the allegations in the indictment and the evidence in this case – and it doesn’t even make logical sense.”
A representative of Loughlin and Giannulli’s legal team didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment Thursday.
The defense said in last month’s dismissal motion that notes kept by Singer show federal agents engineered “a sham . . . in an effort to ‘entrap’ Defendants and ‘nail’ them ‘at all costs,’ ” and that prosecutors hid those notes from defense attorneys.
The defendants say at least two federal prosecutors saw Singer’s notes in October 2018, but “the prosecution buried this evidence and repeatedly misrepresented to Defendants and the Court that it had fully complied with its” legal obligations.
The disclosure of Singer’s notes should have been made no later than 30 days after indictment under court rules, the lawyers said.
In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors conceded they should have disclosed Singer’s notes in a more timely manner but argued that the defendants, who aren’t scheduled to go to trial until October at the earliest, haven’t suffered any unfair prejudice.
“Moreover, the notes are just 47 pages long and, of those, the defendants contend that only a few lines are exculpatory,” the feds wrote.
Globe correspondent Jeremy C. Fox contributed to this report.
See more at The Boston Globe
