The teen daughter of an actress who has been charged in a college admissions fraud and bribery scheme posted a video to her nearly 2 million subscribers last year in which she said she didn’t really care about school.
The video was posted by social media influencer Olivia Jade Giannulli, daughter of actress Lori Loughlin, after the teen had been accepted in USC. Giannulli, 19, is currently a first-year student at the school.
Loughlin was named Tuesday as part of a federal case alleging she and her husband paid $500,000 to have their two daughters labeled as recruits to the USC crew team, even though neither participated in the sport. Loughlin, who rose to fame for her role in “Full House,” is one of 50 people charged in the entrance-exam cheating scam involving other elite schools.
In light of those charges, Giannulli’s social media posts about her education are receiving intense scrutiny.
The rising star also has 1.3 million Instagram followers and 182,000 followers on Twitter. As an influencer, she has sponsored posts with Amazon, Clinique and Sephora.
In the video posted to her popular YouTube page on Aug. 18, 2018, Giannulli said balancing her career and her first year of college was going to be tough.
“The whole college thing, yup, I’m going,” she starts off in the video, which was presented as a Q & A with her followers.
“With work, it’s going to be hard. Like my first week of school, I am leaving to go to Fiji for work, and then I’ll be in New York a bunch this year for work, and traveling to different countries because I am creating something with this country and that’s for work. So I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend, but I’m gonna go in and talk to my deans and everyone and hope that I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying … I don’t really care about school.”
The video was viewed nearly 803,000 times. Her YouTube page, in which she vlogs about makeup, dating and college parties, has almost two million subscribers.
In an April 20 tweet, Giannulli said “it’s so hard to try in school when you don’t care about anything you’re learning.”
https://twitter.com/oliviajadee/status/855271683405488131
Federal authorities said “Operation Varsity Blues” is the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department, with the parents accused of paying an estimated $25 million in bribes.
Consulting company founder Rick Singer pleaded guilty to running the cheating scam after the charges were announced Tuesday.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn17xhEA4H_/
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
