Team Loughlin Says Feds Withholding Evidence

Prosecutors are withholding evidence that would show Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, believed the $500,000 they paid to a college admissions consultant’s charity was a legitimate donation, not bribes that would ensure their daughters were admitted to USC as phony rowers, the couple’s attorneys wrote in a court filing.

The LA Times reports the couple’s legal team, led by former Enron prosecutor Sean Berkowitz, is demanding the government turn over FBI reports, known as 302s, that memorialized agents’ interviews with the consultant at the center of the scheme, William “Rick” Singer.

Those reports would show where Singer told his clients their six-figure payments would end up, Berkowitz wrote. In the case of Loughlin and Giannulli, who have been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering and bribery, the couple thought their money “would go to USC itself — for legitimate, university-approved purposes — or to other legitimate charitable causes,” their lawyers wrote.

Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston have so far refused to disclose the FBI reports, Berkowitz wrote. They have provided only a summary of Singer’s discussion of his dealings with Loughlin and Giannulli, he said.

The summary is appended to Berkowitz’s filing. Singer explained to the couple that to have their daughters admitted to USC as recruited coxswains, they “would need to write a $50,000 check to Donna Heinel at USC and pay an additional $200,000 through the KWF,” the summary says. KWF is short for Singer’s charity, the Key Worldwide Foundation.


Prosecutors say Heinel, then a high-ranking administrator at USC, presented the couple’s daughters to an admissions committee as elite rowers, which they were not. Heinel has been fired by USC. She has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering, bribery and fraud.

But to hear their lawyers tell it, Loughlin and Giannulli believed they were sending money to a charity in good standing with the Internal Revenue Service, and that the money would “support programs geared toward helping underprivileged children” and “legitimate university activities” at USC.