A Newport Beach woman who paid $9,000 to have an imposter take online classes for her son, in order to earn credits to facilitate his graduation from Georgetown University, was sentenced Wednesday to five weeks in prison.
Karen Littlefair, 57, was also sentenced by U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs in Boston to two years of supervised release, which includes 300 hours of community service, and ordered to pay a fine of $209,000.
Littlefair pleaded guilty in January to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
She conspired with William “Rick” Singer and others to pay to have an employee of Singer’s for-profit college counseling business, The Edge College & Career Network (The Key), take online classes in place of her son and submit those fraudulently earned credits to Georgetown to facilitate his graduation, according to federal prosecutors.
The Key employee completed four classes for Littlefair’s son at Georgetown and elsewhere, and in exchange, Littlefair paid Singer’s company $9,000. Littlefair’s son graduated from Georgetown, using the credits earned by the Key employee, in May 2018.
Singer previously pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the government’s investigation.
Dozens of parents and college athletic coaches were implicated in the scandal.
“Full House” actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion-designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, pleaded guilty in May to federal conspiracy charges for participating in the scheme and face sentencing on Aug. 21.
In a court filing on Monday, lawyers for the couple, who admitted to paying $500,000 to get their daughters into USC as fake crew recruits, asked the judge to cut their bail from $1 million to $100,000. They also asked the judge to remove the requirement that their bonds be secured by a lien on their house.
If the judge accepts their plea deals, Loughlin will be sentenced to two months in prison, and Giannulli will be sentenced to five months.
Oscar-nominated actress Felicity Huffman was released Oct. 25 from a low-security federal prison camp in Northern California 11 days into a 14-day sentence handed down last September for paying to have a proctor correct her daughter’s answers on a college-entrance exam.
Huffman was also ordered to spend a year on supervised release, pay a $30,000 fine and perform 250 hours of community service. She was the first parent to be sentenced in connection with the wide-ranging college-admissions cheating scandal, a probe code-named “Varsity Blues.”