Felicity Huffman - Actress talks about scandal for the first time
Felicity Huffman, 60, has spoken for the first time about her role in the college admissions scandal that ultimately landed her in jail. In an interview with "ABC7", the Oscar-nominated actress explained: "People assume that I was looking for a way to cheat the system and that I was doing proverbial criminal back-alley deals, but that wasn't the case."
Huffmann was convicted of paying $15,000 to Rick Singer, the mastermind of the fraud scheme. He made sure that the results of her daughter's exams were falsified. Now Huffman explained that she saw in Singer a renowned college counselor whom she trusted implicitly.
"I felt like I would be a bad mom if I didn't do it"
"After a year, he started saying, 'Your daughter is not going to get accepted to any of the colleges she wants to go to.' And so I believed him," she explains her decision. Paying the bribe seemed to her at the time to be the only way to give her daughter "a chance at a future." She continues: "I had the feeling that I would be a bad mother if I didn't do it. So I did it." On the way to the exam, the actress was plagued by a guilty conscience, she recalls: "I thought the whole time, 'Turn around, just turn around', but to my shame I didn't."
The "Desperate Housewives" actress served eleven days of her 14-day sentence in prison in October 2019. She was also sentenced to 250 hours of community service and a year's probation.
Her husband, "Shameless" star William H. Macy (73), was not charged in connection with the incident. Their daughter, who is said not to have known about the bribe, later retook the test and was accepted into the theater program at Carnegie Mellon University, where she is currently studying.
Singer is said to have taken 25 million dollars
Rick Singer was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in January. He had helped numerous celebrities and wealthy parents to get their children into elite universities despite their lack of achievements. His clients also included "Full House" actress Lori Loughlin (59) and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli (60). Singer is said to have received a total of more than 25 million dollars for his illegal services.
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Source: www.stern.de
