Felicity Huffman is expected to plead guilty in a Boston courtroom Monday to a fraud conspiracy charge for her role in a brazen test-fixing and bribery scheme that has sent the once-beloved actress' reputation and career prospects tumbling.
Huffman, 56, has admitted to paying $15,000 to William "Rick" Singer, a Newport Beach college admissions consultant, to inflate her daughter's SAT score.
Prosecutors will recommend a sentence at the low end of guidelines that call for four to 10 months in prison, according to Huffman's plea deal and federal sentencing guidelines.
But Huffman's attorneys said in her plea agreement that they would reserve the right to argue that her sentence should be calculated at a slightly lower range than what prosecutors have proposed. If they make that argument and are successful, Huffman could face a sentence between six months in prison and no time at all, according to federal sentencing guidelines.
In a mea culpa a month earlier, Huffman said she would not contest the government's allegations and apologized to the public and her friends, family and daughter, who Huffman said knew nothing of the test-fixing scheme.
Singer told investigators he went to Huffman's home in 2017 and explained to the actress and her husband, the actor William H. Macy, how the scheme worked. Singer told the couple he "controlled" a private school in West Hollywood, where Huffman's daughter would take the exam; he explained that an accomplice, 36-year-old Mark Riddell, would proctor the exam and correct their daughter's answers after she finished the test.
Huffman and Macy agreed to it, according to a FBI affidavit filed in federal court.
Key to the scheme, prosecutors say, was having Huffman's daughter diagnosed with a learning disability, which would give the girl extra time on the SAT and allow Riddell to proctor the exam at a school of Singer's choosing. In October 2017, Huffman learned her daughter got the extra-time designation. She emailed Singer: "Hurray!"
The following day, when a counselor at her daughter's school told Huffman she would have to take the test at her own school, the actress emailed Singer again: "Ruh Ro!"
Singer intervened. With Huffman's help, he explained that the girl was taking the test elsewhere and on a weekend because she didn't want to miss a school day.
Eventually, she was cleared to take the SAT at a private school in West Hollywood. Prosecutors allege Singer was paying an administrator at the school, Igor Dvorskiy, thousands of dollars to turn a blind eye to the cheating. Dvorskiy has been indicted on a racketeering conspiracy charge. He has pleaded not guilty.
Huffman's daughter took the SAT in December 2017. Once she was done, Riddell, whose day job was leading college entrance exam preparation at IMG Academy in Florida, corrected her answers.
The girl scored 400 points higher than when she took the preliminary SAT a year earlier, prosecutors said.
Two months later, Huffman and Macy paid $15,000 to Singer's foundation. The Key Worldwide Foundation, whose purported mission was to help "underserved children" pursue an education, has since been exposed as Singer's vehicle for laundering payments from parents and paying bribes to college coaches, administrators and exam proctors.
Riddell has pleaded guilty to fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy; he will be sentenced in July. Singer has pleaded guilty to four felonies and admitted to masterminding the scheme; he will be sentenced in September.
For reasons that remain unclear, Macy has not been charged.
In October 2018, Huffman and Macy told Singer they wanted to have their younger daughter's SAT rigged as well, according to the FBI affidavit. The girl was "so academically driven," Huffman told Singer over the phone, but they didn't want to take chances.
"We're talking about Georgetown," Macy told him. The couple didn't know it, but by then, Singer had been apprehended by the FBI. He was cooperating, and had allowed agents to record the conversation with Huffman and Macy.
For a school of that caliber _ Georgetown's acceptance rate that year was below 15 percent _ Singer told Huffman and Macy their daughter would need to score in the mid-1400s to 1500 on her SAT "to be solid."
Singer told them he could fix it like "the last time we did this" and send an invoice for $15,000 afterward.
"Are we all OK with the financial side and the actual operational side of it?" he asked.
"Cool," Macy said, according to transcripts quoted in the affidavit.
Ultimately, Huffman and Macy did not end up going through with the test-fixing scheme for their younger daughter, prosecutors say. They have not said why.
