Hallmark reportedly fired actress Lori Loughlin, who appeared in the hit series When Calls the Heart as well as several films, after news broke that Loughlin and her husband allegedly participated in a bribery scheme to get their daughters into college. Makeup brand Sephora dropped her daughter, Olivia Jade, over the same incident.
“We are saddened by the recent news surrounding the college admissions allegations. We are no longer working with Lori Loughlin and have stopped development of all productions that air on the Crown Media Family Network channels involving Lori Loughlin including Garage Sale Mysteries, an independent third-party production,” Crown Media Family Networks said in a statement sent to USA Today.
According to People magazine:
Loughlin, 54, is among dozens charged in an alleged college admissions scam involving elite colleges and universities including Yale, Georgetown, the University of Southern California and Stanford. Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, allegedly paid $500,000 to make it appear that their daughter had been a rower, the indictment states. (Olivia Jade is not currently listed on the USC women’s rowing roster. It’s unclear if she was aware of the alleged scheme, and she was not charged.)
Both Loughlin and Giannulli were both arrested this week—she on Wednesday and he on Tuesday—on a felony charge of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. Giannulli appeared in federal court on Tuesday and was released after posting a $1 million bond. Loughlin made her first appearance in federal court on Wednesday in Los Angeles where a judge set her bond at $1 million, according to the Associated Press, the Orange County Register and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
The scandal made headlines around the globe and garnered the attention of some Christian leaders.
“The Faith and Education Coalition is thankful to our law enforcement and justice system for exposing these cases of dishonesty and bribery in the college admission process,” says Girien Salazar of the Faith and Education Coalition – NHCLC.
“We are committed to biblical justice in American education and to issues of education equity and high standards in public education for the expressed purpose of ensuring college-career ready students. We want all students, regardless of their family’s income level, ethnic background or area of residence, to have the same opportunities to succeed in education, and that includes getting into college. We are thankful for tests like the SAT that allow students to be evaluated based on aptitude, for colleges that consider a students robust application and not a prominent last name and for federal grants that assist financially burdened families,” he continues.
“However, we are heartbroken that a small community of individuals would use their wealth, status and position to abuse these systems and subvert justice and fairness for selfish ambition. We pray that the persons and universities involved would repent of their actions, find forgiveness and restoration in Christ, and commit to a fair and equitable college admissions process,” Salazar says.
Actress Felicity Huffman was also charged in the scandal.
