It shouldn’t come as a surprise that being arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned for their role in the 2019 college admissions scandal put a serious strain on the marriage of TV star Lori Loughlin and designer Mossimo Giannulli.
But following news last week that the couple had split after 28 years of marriage, sources close to Loughlin, 61, and Giannulli, 62, have shed light on how the scandal damaged their reputations and careers and prompted a painful “blame game” that the once loving duo could not overcome, according to the Daily Mail.
In particular, it’s being reported that Giannulli felt his wife was the “driving force” behind their decision to pay $500,000 in bribes to get their questionably qualified daughters, Isabella and Olivia Jade Giannulli, fraudulently admitted to the University of Southern California.
“Their marriage was very strong before the (expletive) hit the fan with the college admissions scandal,” a source told the Daily Mail. “That totally derailed it. His sales suffered. She lost Hallmark. They blamed each other, but he blamed her more.”
Prior to the scandal, Loughlin enjoyed a thriving career as wholesome Aunt Becky in the family sitcom “Full House” and as a popular star of Hallmark Channel rom-coms and Christmas movies. Giannulli created the successful Mossimo mid-range clothing line featured at Target, which he later sold. Following the couple’s arrest in March 2019, Loughlin lost the chance to appear in the “Full House” reboot and other acting jobs, while Target distanced itself from Giannulli. Among other things, they resigned their long-time membership at the Bel-Air Country Club and were dumped by friends who were “very critical” about her actions, People reported at the time.
Loughlin and Giannulli were among dozens of wealthy parents, including some from the Bay Area, who paid admissions fixer William “Rick” Singer tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to arrange for their children’s test scores to be boosted or information on their college applications to be doctored to make the children appear to be desirable candidates for top U.S. schools.
In the case of Isabella and Olivia Jade Giannulli, Singer worked with the then-teenagers and their parents to make it appear that they competed in crew at the high school level, so that they could be recruited to join the USC crew team. In fact, neither Isabella nor Olivia Jade Giannulli, now 27 and 26, respectively, had any background in the sport.
Prosecutors produced evidence showing that Loughlin and Giannulli had their daughters pose for photos on a rowing machine to help Singer and his alleged USC accomplices craft false athletic profiles for their admission. They furthermore coached Olivia Jade on what to say to her prep school guidance counselor who had begun asking questions about her USC application, according to prosecutors.
When Olivia Jade asked her parents whether she should list USC as her top choice school, Loughlin replied: “Yes . . . But it might be a flag for the weasel to meddle.” Giannulli added: “(Expletive) him,” and called the counselor a “nosy bastard.”
Loughlin thereafter instructed her daughter: “Don’t say too much to that man.”
Following the couple’s indictment, they spent more than a year insisting on their innocence in court filings and in leaks to the media. But they finally agreed to plead guilty in May 2020 to conspiracy and other charges. Ahead of being sentenced to two months in federal prison, Loughlin told the court: “I went along with a plan to give my daughters an unfair advantage in the college admissions process.”
Loughlin continued: “I ignored my intuition and allowed myself to be swayed from my moral compass. I thought I was acting out of love for my children. But in reality, it only undermined and diminished my daughters’ abilities and accomplishments.
“More broadly and more importantly, I now understand that my decision helped exacerbate existing inequalities in society generally and in the higher education system specifically,” she also said. “That realization weighs heavily on me.”
While Judge Nathaniel Gorton said he believed Loughlin was remorseful, he also castigated her for her “avarice,” for not being satisfied with her already “charmed life” and for seeking “whatever prestige and instant gratification that comes from being able to show off the admissions of your daughters to a preferred university.
Even though Loughlin was sentenced to less time in prison than her husband’s five months — which implied he was more culpable — a source close to Giannulli told the Daily Mail that he still saw her as the “driving” force behind using corrupt methods to get their daughter into USC.
“The entire family was embarrassed and that was like a huge deal to Mossimo,” the source told the Daily Mail. “It felt like he had built all this goodwill, publicly, and it was all gone. They were literally the butt of jokes on late night TV. There was this perception that they were rich, and the worst kind of rich people, who use their wealth for unfair advantages.”
“They had the world, and it wasn’t enough for them,” the source continued. “Their daughters had privilege, and that wasn’t enough for them. It was humiliating. And Lori was really the one who was driving that bus. She was the one who wanted to do the rowing pictures.”
“She was really at the forefront, and Mossimo was embarrassed at what happened,” the source continued. “His family is everything to him, and this was just shameful. So they never really recovered.”
The source said that Loughlin and Giannulli had been “living separate lives for a long time” and that “something died with that embarrassment.” But even with so much embarrassment, heartbreak and loss, the source also said: “I bet he finds another woman soon if he doesn’t already have one. That just seems pretty much like what he’d do.”
A source close to Olivia Jade, the couple’s YouTuber daughter, told the Daily Mail she “feels terrible’” about the split. While she and Isabella are aware they are not at fault for their parents’ crimes, which were prompted by their effort to get them into college, “there’s no way for them not to feel a little bad about it,” the source said.
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