BEVERLY HILLS, CA – FEBRUARY 27: Olivia Jade Giannulli and mom Lori Loughlin attend The Women’s Cancer Research Fund’s An Unforgettable Evening Benefit Gala at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel on February 27, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic)

Why are we obsessed with a good scam? An article in the New York Times offered the best explanation. “[Scam stories’] flagrant dishonesty captures public imagination. Their stories allow us to vicariously live out our worst urges, but they also present us with open-and-shut arcs that show crim doesn’t pay (in a world that, more often than not, suggests it does)”.

“The College Scandal” starring Full House’s Aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin) and Desperate Housewives’ Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) sounds like a good movie. But in March 2019, this narrative was actually real life as Loughlin and Huffman were charged – along with thirty wealthy parents – for buying their children’s entry into college.

(Editor’s note: In the fifth episode of Season 1 of the ABC comedy-drama, Huffman’s character Lynette Scavo and her husband, Tom – played by Doug Savant – “donate” thousands of dollars to get their twin sons into an elite private school. Imagine playing that out when you had actually committed that crime in real life.)

Huffman owned up to paying US$15,000 to the scheme’s mastermind to inflate one of her daughter’s college admission test scores, took the charges on the chin and served 11 days behind bars. Loughlin, however, has denied any wrongdoing which has out her in more deep water.

Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli pleaded not guilty to paying US$500,000 to bribe her academic middling daughters’ ways into the University of Southern California as fake cockswains. In March, they were hit with charges of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit bribery. A report overnight suggests Loughlin is now conducting mock trials with her attorneys ahead of her upcoming court battle. “Lori has been meeting with her lawyers for days at a time,” a source told US Weekly.

“It’s her full-time job and she is very involved with her defence. When not at her lawyer’s office, Lori is emailing and texting with the team. Her lawyer plays the prosecutor, grilling her,” the source added.

More to come.