Jailers face parking-scam rap
Olivia Jade speaks out on college scandal
Four city correction officers were among five defendants indicted Tuesday on charges of using forged disability-parking placards.
One of the officers, Nakia Gales, 44, of Manhattan, is accused of selling the phony placards to her colleagues for up to $280 apiece.
“Members of our community with severe disabilities need these placards to enable them to park near . . . essential places,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said. “The defendants al kklegedly corrupted the placard program for their own convenience.”
Gales, the other three corrections officers — Judy Guity, 46, Rasma Caines, 43, and Shyiera Daniels, 29 — and Craig Scott, 60, are facing charges of criminal possession of a forged instrument. They were released on their own recognizance.
Olivia Jade Giannulli, the 21-year-old daughter of Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, has finally broken her silence on the college admissions scandal.
Appearing on Facebook Watch’s “Red Table Talk,” the former YouTuber admitted she was “ashamed” by the ordeal that landed both of her parents in prison.
“I felt so ashamed and embarrassed . . . although I didn’t really 100 percent understand what had just happened because there was a lot that, when I was applying, I was not fully aware of what was going on,” she told cohosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield-Norris. “When I got home [from spring break], I just felt so ashamed.”
Olivia said she was “too embarrassed” to return to the University of Southern California, where she and her sister, Isabella Rose, had been enrolled after being accepted as rowing recruits despite having never participated in the sport.
“I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, clearly,” she said.
Olivia, who hasn’t spoken to her parents since they’ve entered prison this fall because of a COVID-19 quarantine rule, said she doesn’t deserve pity and only wants a chance to own her mistakes publicly. Her ignorance, she said, explained why she didn’t understand how her family’s decisions were so offensive to many.
“A huge part of having privilege is not knowing you have privilege, so when it was happening, it didn’t feel wrong,” she said. “It didn’t feel like, ‘That’s not fair. A lot of people don’t have that.’ . . . I was in my own little bubble, focusing on my comfortable world.”
Loughlin and her husband earlier this year pleaded guilty to paying $500,000 to William “Rick” Singer to secure their daughters’ admission to USC.
“Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman served 11 days of a two-week jail sentence in 2019 for her role in the admissions scandal.
To Olivia and her friends in their wealthy “bubble,” donating money as a means to gain admissions was “normal.”
“It really can’t be excused,” Olivia said.
Banfield-Norris wasn’t willing to excuse the family’s behavior either.
“At the end of the day, you’re going to be OK,” BanfieldNorris said. “There’s so many of us that it is not going to be that situation. It makes it difficult right now for me to care.”
The ordeal forced Olivia and her sister to reframe their perspective.
“This has been a really eyeopening experience for me . . . and although there’s a lot of negative around it and there’s a lot of mistakes and wrongdoings, it’s led me to have a completely different outlook on a lot of situations,” she said.
A huge part of having privilege is not knowing you have privilege.
— Olivia Jade Giannulli