Actress Felicity Huffman reported to federal prison in Dublin, California, on Tuesday, Oct. 15, to begin serving a two-week sentence for her role in the college admissions scam, a representative said.
“Ms. Huffman is prepared to serve the term of imprisonment Judge Talwani ordered as one part of the punishment she imposed for Ms. Huffman’s actions,” the statement said. “She will begin serving the remainder of the sentence Judge Talwani imposed—one year of supervised release, with conditions including 250 hours of community service—when she is released.”
Huffman is the first of more than 30 parents charged in the sprawling criminal case to begin serving a prison sentence. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud for paying $15,000 to the scam’s mastermind to boost her daughter’s SAT scores.
In court last month, Huffman read from a piece of paper and apologized to the judge, her daughters and her husband, actor William H. Macy.
“I am deeply ashamed of what I have done,” she told the judge. “At the end of the day I had a choice to make. I could have said, ‘no.'”
Huffman echoed that sentiment in a statement released to the media, saying, “There are no excuses or justifications for my actions. Period.”
“And I especially want to apologize to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices supporting their children,” she said in her statement.
Huffman is among dozens of defendants in the case, which also included “Full House” star Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, in April. The pair pleaded not guilty in April.
The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Andrew Lelling, said earlier this month that “we will probably ask for a higher sentence for [Loughlin] than we did for Felicity Huffman,” according to the Boston Globe.
“I can’t tell you what that would be,” he said.
Loughlin, 55, and Giannulli, 56, are fighting the charges. Lelling said that it might not work out to their advantage.
“It just happened to be that Ms. Huffman was probably the least culpable of the defendants who we’ve charged in that case,” he said, according to Fox News. “She took responsibility almost immediately, she was contrite, did not try to minimize her conduct. I think she handled it in a very classy way.”
The CNN Wire and Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
