US actress, Lori Loughlin jailed over college admissions scandal: Here’s what you should know

Team Udayavani, Aug 24, 2020, 2:30 PM IST

More than 50 people have been charged with participating in the college admissions scandal. Latest in the list is actress Lori Loughlin, who on Friday, Aug 21 was sentenced to a prison term of two months for participating in the racket. Her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, was handed a five-month prison term.

The scheme involving bribery, money laundering, and document fabrication to unfairly get students admitted to elite colleges.

According to BBC, Prosecutors said Loughlin and Giannulli paid $500,000 (£408,000) in bribes to have their two daughters admitted into the University of Southern California (USC) as fake rowing-team recruits

The main accused, William Singer, owned a college consultancy service and ran a racket that secured his clients admissions into elite schools. More than 30 parents were charged with facilitating fraud and paying a combined $25 million in bribes to get their children into elite schools

According to The Guardian, US Justice Department categorised the racket into three parts. In the first part Administrators of the SAT and ACT college exams were bribed to allow someone else to pretend to be the student and take the exam in their place. They gave the students answers or fixed their wrong answers after they had taken the test.

In the second part, College coaches received bribes to designate applicants as recruited athletes regardless of their athletic ability. In the third part, the culprits used a fake charity to siphon the funds collected from parents.

The schools include Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Texas.