Actress Huffman pleads guilty in college scandal

Boston — Actress Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty Monday afternoon to fraud conspiracy in the college admissions bribery scandal, two months after prosecutors accused her of paying $15,000 to help one of her daughters get a phony SAT score.

“Are you pleading guilty of your own free will?” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani asked Huffman. “Yes, your honor,” Huffman replied. Huffman, of Los Angeles, was among 33 parents charged in March when federal prosecutors disclosed an investigation of an illicit scheme that a college admissions consultant orchestrated to help children of the wealthy get into prominent universities. The two-part scheme, prosecutors said, included cheating on tests and helping applicants pose as recruited athletes to improve their chances of admission.

According to an investigator’s affidavit filed in federal court in Boston, Huffman paid $15,000 to a sham charity controlled by admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer in exchange for help obtaining a fraudulent SAT score for her older daughter.

The affidavit says that Huffman’s daughter took the SAT in December 2017 at a testing center in West Hollywood, and received a score of 1420. The test was proctored by a testing expert whom Singer frequently paid, investigators said, to facilitate cheating by surreptitiously correcting answers or otherwise helping students during the exam.

Huffman had indicated in April that she planned to plead guilty in U.S. District Court in Boston. In a written statement at the time, she expressed “deep regret and shame over what I have done,” and said she was ashamed for the pain she had caused her daughter, friends and others. She also apologized “to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices to support their children and do so honestly.”

Huffman wrote that her daughter knew nothing about the scheme, “and in my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her.”

Huffman, 56, starred in the television show “Desperate Housewives.” She is one of 14 parents who have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. None of their children were charged.

Nineteen other parents — including actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, designer Mossimo Giannulli — are fighting charges against them.

Under the terms of Huffman’s plea agreement, prosecutors are recommending a sentence that would include at least four months in prison. But Huffman reserved the right to argue that her offense corresponds to a guideline that could yield a more lenient sentence. A federal judge will have the final say.