Felicity Huffman Breaks Silence On 2019 College Admissions Scandal: “It Felt Like I Would Be A Bad Mother If I Didn’t Do It”

Greg Evans
·2 min read
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Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman says she participated in what would become known as the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scheme because “it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it.”

Breaking her silence on the 2019 cheating scandal that led to a 14-day prison sentence for the actor, Huffman said in an exclusive interview with Los Angeles ABC affiliate KABC, “It was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.”

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The KABC interview was featured on Good Morning America today. See the video below.

Huffman was one of the more than 30 parents of college-bound children who paid admissions consultant Rick Singer to, among other things, fraudulently raise SAT scores to better the kids’ chances of getting into top-notch universities. Also caught up in the scheme was actor Lori Loughlin.

Huffman, who was accused of paying $15,000 to raise her daughter’s SAT scores, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud, and was sentenced in 2019 to 14 days in prison, a year of probation, 250 hours of community service and fined $30,000.

In the interview with KABC, the Emmy-winning Huffman said, “I know hindsight is 20/20 but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it. So I did it.” She recalled that, as she drove her daughter to take the admissions test in 2017, she “kept thinking, turn around, just turn around.”

“And to my undying shame,” Huffman said, “I didn’t.”

When the FBI showed up at her home the following year, Huffman and her daughters were woken up at gunpoint, she says, recalling that, as she was taken into custody, “I literally turned to one of the FBI people in a flak jacket and a gun and I went, ‘Is this a joke?'”

Huffman’s husband, actor William H. Macy, was not charged in the scheme.

During the interview, Huffman, who served 11 days in jail, apologized to “the students and the families that sacrifice and work really hard to get to where they are going legitimately.”

After completing her community service with the non-profit organization A New Way of Life, which assists women who have been incarcerated with housing, clothing and job training, Huffman joined the non-prof’s board of directors, and now wants to use her spotlight to benefit the cause.

“I want to use my experience and what I’ve gone through and the pain to bring something good, which is to shine a light on the organization,” Huffman told KABC’s Marc Brown.

Singer was sentenced in January to 3 1/2 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $10 million he received in the scam.

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