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Federal prosecutors denied Friday that law enforcement officials have engaged in misconduct, false evidence, or attempted to catch Full House actress Lori Loughlin, or other wealthy parents who are now awaiting trial in the U.S. university admission scandal. .
Prosecutors in a filing attempted to counter what a federal judge in Boston said last week were “serious and disturbing” allegations that investigators pushed their cooperating witness to lie and trick parents into making incriminating statements.
That cooperator was William “Rick” Singer, a college admissions consultant who admitted to orchestrating a vast scheme to use bribery and other forms of fraud to help wealthy parents secure their children’s admission to the best schools.
Prosecutors acknowledged that investigators ordered Singer during the taped calls with the parents to “use tricks”, but said that his calls with them were consistent with the evidence they had gathered and did not constitute government misconduct.
“The government did not use Singer to belittle the commission of a crime,” prosecutors wrote.
Loughlin’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
To date, 53 people have been indicted for a plan that prosecutors say Singer ran to facilitate cheating on college entrance exams and using bribery to secure admission of children of multiple parents to schools as bogus. athletic recruits.
Prosecutors allege that Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli agreed with Singer to pay $ 500,000 in bribes for their two daughters to be named as recruits for the University of Southern California team.
Defense attorneys last month sought to dismiss the case, saying Singer’s personal notes show that the calls he made to the parents were a “sham” orchestrated by investigators to catch them.
In notes written in October 2018, Singer said FBI agents told him to “tell a lie” during calls saying that the money they were paying would be used for college donations rather than bribes.
Prosecutors said Friday that Singer’s notes referred to calls he made during a part of the investigation to parents about current or future payments and not to defendants awaiting trial, who said they were former participants in the scheme.
Prosecutors said Singer at the time refused to use “blunt language” to refer to money as bribes.
Singer told the FBI on Wednesday that while “he always knew he was doing a quid pro quo,” he did not realize until later that it was the same as the bribe, according to the interview notes.
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