Aunt Becky Wants Her Fraud Charges Tossed

Cory Wilson is a Calgary-based criminal defence lawyer who has extensive experience representing individuals charged with fraud. 

Aunt Becky is used to a Full House but does not want to go to the Big House for her involvement in the college admissions scandal. 

Lori Laughlin and 13 other parents charged in the college admissions scandal have asked a judge to dismiss the bribery, fraud and money laundering charges. Lawyers are arguing that the federal prosecutors in Boston violated their client’s rights and broke long-held judicial rules by withholding for 16 months notes taken by the scam’s admitted ringleader, William “Rick” Singer. 

The argument revolves around notes Singer wrote in his iPhone, memorializing for his lawyers a number of interactions with his various government handlers who dealt with his cooperation. In 2008, Singer agreed to assist federal authorities to build a case against dozens of his former clients who allegedly paid to get their kids into colleges and universities through the back door. 

 To date, 22 parents have pled guilty to various fraud and money laundering charges. Twenty-one parents have been sentenced to prison for terms ranging from 14 days to nine months. 

A group of parents who have maintained their innocence throughout the process, including Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli, are scheduled to go to trial October 5, 2020 in Boston. The remaining parents are scheduled for trial in early 2021. Singer is still awaiting sentencing. 

In trying to get charges dropped prior to trial, lawyers are arguing that Signer was “browbeat” by overzealous police and prosecutors into twisting the arrangements he had with various parents and their conversations. The parents maintain that they did nothing wrong and that the payments were not bribes, but donations to university accounts. It is claimed that the parents are in possession of a note written by Singer indicating that he had been instructed to tell a fib and to characterize the payments as bribes. 

The legal motion exposed several hundred pages of FBI interviews reports and correspondence between government lawyers and defence counsel. From the disclosure, a picture emerged in which it appears Singer’s handlers led him down a path of deceit in order to secure their criminal case against various parents. 

On early 2018, two weeks afters Singer began cooperating, he had a recorded phone conversation with a parent looking to secure a place for his daughter at Cornell. Singer told the parent that he would get the child into Cornell through the side door with a “donation to the coach”. The parent asked for Singer to elaborate and Singer responded “Essentially, um, that donation is going to the – you know, to the program.” Immediately after the phone call, Singer was yelled at by his handlers, or so Singer wrote in his iPhone.

“They continue to ask me to tell a fib and not restate what I told my clients as to where there money was going — to the program not the coach,” he wrote. While he told clients the payments were donations, “they want it to be a payment,” he wrote.  

Federal prosecutors found the note while downloading the contents of Singers phone, and decided to withhold it, claiming it was protected by solicitor client privilege. 

Laughlin’s lawyer argued that prosecutors committed “outrageous” misconduct in withholding this valuable piece of evidence which demonstrates the innocence of the clients including the fact that prosecutors wanted Singer to go along with a version of events that he knew were not accurate about what the parents actually knew. 

Until a decision is reached, the saga will continue…

Cory Wilson is a criminal defence lawyer based in Calgary. If you have been charged with a criminal offence or are a suspect in a criminal investigation, call today for a free, no obligation consultation.