Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman shared his thoughts on the college admissions scandal involving actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, suggesting without evidence that the prosecutors in the case are also paying extra to get their children into elite colleges.
“Who would have ever known that’s illegal? You know, who would have ever known that if you pay extra for your kid because you may have extra?” Chapman said on the Domenick Nati Show Friday. “Who ever knew that?”
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Chapman went on to say that the “district attorney… the judges… the prosecutors… whoever went after them, I’d like to see where their kids are at.”
Nati laughed off Chapman’s comments, but he was serious.
“I guarantee there was some kind of favors whether it was cash or, ‘Oh, we’ll drop charges on you,’” Chapman said. “It is so outrageous… One was $300,000 or something… $250,000 are you out of your freaking mind? What a crock. And you know, it surprises me that it’s in the federal system. The state system though is the same way, OK.”
Chapman went on to call bonds on celebrities “outrageous,” suggesting that the alleged crimes were not as serious as drug possession.
“You know, no one was hurt. Like you said there was no victims,” Chapman told Nati. “The judges want to get in the news. Remember O.J. Simpson’s judge? Ever since that, these judges want to get in the news and they want to… someday run for another office… The motivation behind it is not justice, ok. The motivation behind that stuff is personal gain.”
On March 12, the U.S. Department of Justice charged 50 people — including Huffman, Loughlin and Loughlin’s husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli — of paying bribes through a firm called The Key Worldwide Foundation to get their children into elite colleges.
Huffman allegedly paid $15,000 to get a better SAT score for her daughter. Loughlin and Giannulli were accused of paying $500,000 to have their two teenage daughters designated as crew recruits to attend USC, even though neither of them participated in the sport.
Loughlin and Gianulli were both arrested and released on $1 million bond each, while Huffman was released after posting $250,000 bail. They are scheduled to be in a Boston courtroom on April 3.
Despite Chapman’s claim there were “no victims” in the scandal, Jennifer Kay Toy filed a $500 billion lawsuit against Loughlin, Huffman, Giannulli and the other defendants in the federal indictment. She alleged that her son Joshua would have been accepted to the colleges linked to the scandal if the admissions process was not “manipulated.”
“Because of Joshua’s hard work and study he graduated with a 4.2 grade point average. I couldn’t be more proud. Joshua applied to some of the colleges where cheating took place and did not get in,” Toy wrote in the lawsuit. “I’m now aware of the massive cheating scandal wherein wealthy people conspired with people in positions of power and authority at colleges in order to allow their children to gain access to the very colleges that Joshua was rejected from.”
Photo credit: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images
