Lori Loughlin Could Face a 'Substantially Higher' Sentence Than Felicity Huffman

Just because Felicity Huffman walked away with only two weeks of jail time for her role in the college admissions scandal doesn’t mean that Lori Loughlin will necessarily get so lucky—especially if she doesn’t plead guilty, the lawyer prosecuting the case said.

In an interview with WCVB’s On the Record, attorney Andrew Lelling told the show’s hosts that Huffman was “probably the least culpable of the defendants who we’ve charged in that case.”

“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 and so, at the end of the day, we thought the one-month was proportional,” he said.

Then there’s Aunt Becky, who doesn’t seem to have impressed Lelling quite so much. According to Yahoo,

“If she’s convicted… we would probably ask for a higher sentence for her than we did for Felicity Huffman,” Lelling said. “I can’t tell you exactly what that would be. The longer the case goes, let’s say she goes through to trial, if it is after trial, certainly, we would ask for something substantially higher. If she resolved it before trial, something lower than that.”

So far, Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, have pleaded not guilty to money laundering and fraud charges. Unlike Huffman, who only paid $15,000 for the privilege of helping her daughter cheat on her SATs, Loughlin allegedly gave $500,000 to have her daughters designated as crew team recruits to USC, despite neither of them ever having rowed. Loughlin’s next due back in court in January, which should give her plenty of time to consider Lelling’s words under her crime visor.