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CITY & STATE
Prosecutors want actress
Felicity Huffman to receive a
one-month prison sentence
when she appears before a
judge next Friday, the first
parent to be sentenced in
the college admissions scan-
dal that exploded in March
with the arrests of Huffman
and nearly three-dozen
other parents.
Huffman pleaded guilty
to a fraud conspiracy charge
in May, admitting she con-
spired with college admis-
sions consultant William
“Rick” Singer to fix her
daughter’s entrance exams.
But since Huffman tear-
fully admitted her guilt and
issued a written mea culpa,
she has brought up “quib-
bles” with prosecutors, they
said in a court filing Friday,
in an attempt to “imply that
[she] is somehow less guilty
— that she participated in
fraud only reluctantly, with-
out fully understanding it.”
“That is false,” prose-
cutors wrote.
Huffman’s attorneys re-
ferred questions about the
allegation to a public rela-
tions firm, which didn’t re-
spond.
In a filing of their own,
Huffman’s attorneys on Fri-
day requested a year of pro-
bation, a $20,000 fine and 250
hours of community service,
saying she is remorseful and
“deeply ashamed.”
Included in the filing is a
letter from Huffman herself,
addressed to the judge who
will decide next week
whether to spare or send her
to prison.
Huffman told U.S. Dis-
trict Judge Indira Talwani
she was “shocked” to hear
Singer propose rigging her
daughter’s SAT. But before
long, she said, she felt a
mounting sense of panic
that her daughter’s SAT
scores were too low and
posed a “huge obstacle” to
her future.
“As warped as this
sounds now,” she said, “I
honestly began to feel that
maybe I would be a bad
mother if I didn’t do what
Mr. Singer was suggesting.”
She said she toyed with
the idea for six weeks before
agreeing to pay Singer
$15,000 to fix her daughter’s
score.
In December 2017, Mark
Riddell, Singer’s Harvard-
educated accomplice,
changed the girl’s answers
after she took the test at a
West Hollywood school
where Singer had allegedly
bribed a proctor to permit
the cheating.
Huffman and prose-
cutors say her daughter had
no knowledge of the scheme.
Both Singer and Riddell
have pleaded guilty to an ar-
ray of felonies and are await-
ing sentencing. The proctor,
Igor Dvorskiy, has pleaded
not guilty to conspiracy to
commit racketeering.
While Huffman told the
judge there is “no justifica-
tion for what I have done,”
she said she wanted to lay
out in the letter her reason-
ing, misguided as it was, to
try to explain how a wealthy
mother who could offer her
children every legitimate ad-
vantage decided to break
the law.
From the day her first
child was born, Huffman
said she has been “bewil-
dered” by motherhood: “I so
desperately wanted to do it
right and was so deathly
afraid of doing it wrong.”
Panicked, insecure and
worried her daughter’s low
math scores would hinder
her acting dreams, Huffman
said she managed to con-
vince herself that fixing her
daughter’s test scores
amounted to “giving her a
fair shot.”
“I see the irony in that
statement now because
what I have done is the oppo-
site of fair,” she said. “I have
broken the law, deceived the
educational community, be-
trayed my daughter and
failed my family.”
Sometime after her
mother was led away in
handcuffs the morning of
March 12, Huffman’s daugh-
ter asked her, tearfully, “Why
didn’t you believe in me?
Why didn’t you think I could
do it on my own?” Huffman
wrote in her letter.
“I had no adequate an-
swer for her,” Huffman
wrote. “I could only say, ‘I’m
sorry. I was frightened and I
was stupid.’”
In arguing why she
should be spared prison,
Huffman’s attorneys said
the actress didn’t seek out
Singer but was referred to
him by a friend; that her
daughter has a legitimate
learning disability, unlike
the children of some of Sing-
er’s clients who received
fraudulent diagnoses; that
Singer provided legitimate
counseling to her daughter
for nearly a year before
proposing the scheme; that
she didn’t immediately
agree to go along with it; and
that she decided against re-
peating the scheme for her
younger daughter.
Huffman’s attorneys con-
ceded she “seriously consid-
ered” fixing her younger
daughter’s score but ulti-
mately decided against it,
telling Singer in a call re-
corded by the FBI, “It just
doesn’t feel right.”
Prosecutors excoriated
the account offered by Huff-
man and her attorneys.
Since her guilty plea, they
said, Huffman and her attor-
neys have maintained she
didn’t know Singer was pay-
ing third parties — Riddell,
his accomplice, and
Dvorskiy, the test proctor.
“Huffman is a sophis-
ticated businessperson,”
prosecutors said. “She was
clearly aware that Riddell
and Dvorskiy weren’t help-
ing her cheat on the SAT for
free.”Calling it “deliberate and
manifestly criminal,” prose-
cutors said Huffman’s agree-
ment with Singer wasn’t
reached hurriedly, on im-
pulse, in the heat of the col-
lege application season.
The scheme “unfolded
gradually, over months, re-
quiring her to repeatedly
recommit to deception and
fraud,” they said.
“Her efforts weren’t driv-
en by need or desperation,”
they added, “but by a sense
of entitlement, or at least
moral cluelessness, facili-
tated by wealth and insular-
ity.”
Prosecutors took aim at
Huffman’s parenting blog,
“What the Flicka,” blasting
her for “cultivating, and
monetizing, a public per-
sona as a likeable every-
woman and trustworthy
purveyor of parenting wis-
dom,” even as she conspired
with a crooked consultant to
doctor her daughter’s ex-
ams.
Huffman’s blog made
money, allowing her to selladvertising and merchan-
dise, prosecutors said.
The blog has since been
taken down.
A sentence of home con-
finement, prosecutors
noted, would be served in
Huffman’s large Hollywood
Hills home, which has an in-
finity pool.
They dismissed a fine of
$20,000 as “a rounding error”
for Huffman, whose wealth
they estimated in the tens of
millions.
Huffman agrees she
should be punished, her at-
torneys said. But they argue
probation, a $20,000 fine and
250 hours of community
service are enough.
If approved, Huffman
would work at the Teen Proj-
ect and the Community Co-
alition, two Los Angeles-
area agencies that work with
young people in poor com-
munities, her attorneys said.
Huffman said she would tu-
tor young people, help them
fill out financial aid applica-
tions and answer the phones
at the front desk.Prosecutors suggest month
in jail for Felicity Huffman
Actress’ lawyers seek
probation, fine and
service for role in
admissions scandal.
By Matthew Ormseth
Hundreds of residents
who had been forced from
their homes days earlier by a
fast-moving brush fire that
has charred 2,000 acres in
the hillsides near Murrieta
were allowed to return home
Friday.
Nearly 900 firefighters
have been assigned to the
Tenaja fire in Riverside
County, which erupted
about 4 p.m. Wednesday
near Tenaja and Clinton
Keith roads on a day marked
by thunderstorms in the re-
gion, officials said.
The decision to reduce
evacuation orders to warn-
ings comes after firefighters
— aided by lower tempera-
tures and increased humid-
ity — made significant prog-
ress on the blaze overnight.
The wildfire was 25% con-
tained Friday evening, said
Capt. Fernando Herrera, a
spokesman for the Califor-
nia Department of Forestry
and Fire Protection.
Evacuation orders had
been in place since Thurs-
day for homes along Mon-
tanya, Botanica and Belcara
places and Lone Oak Way in
Murietta. A day earlier, offi-
cials ordered evacuations of
houses along the Trails Cir-
cle in La Cresta and Copper
Canyon, as well as the Santa
Rosa Plateau visitor center
on Clinton Keith Road.
“Things are looking a lot
better this morning,” Her-
rera said. “People can return
to their homes, but they
need to be ready at a mo-
ment’s notice to evacuate
again if the need should
arise.”
On Wednesday and
Thursday, the fire was most
active in the midafternoon.
Firefighters had begun to
get a handle on the blaze by
early Thursday, but then inthe afternoon gusting winds
pushed flames across fire
breaks and sent them racing
down the ridge. The flames
burned up to a creek area at
the base of the Copper Can-
yon development and
threatened homes, but fire-
fighters were able to beat
them back. Two homes re-
ceived a small amount of
cosmetic damage, Herrera
said.
“We had our helicopters
making drops, but the wind
itself was carrying the fire in
a momentum that was very
fast and very intense,” he
said. “The water drops can
slow it down, but it won’t put
it off.”
Video from the fire shows
firefighters going toe to toe
with the raging inferno while
set up in the backyard of a
home overlooking a hill.
One firefighter suffered a
non-life-threatening injury
in the blaze. The cause of the
fire has not been deter-
mined.
Campuses in the Murri-
eta Valley Unified School
District, Perris Union
School District, Romoland
School District and Menifee
School District were closed
Friday because of the fire
and poor air quality.
The blaze erupted
toward the end of a remarka-
bly calm summer in terms of
wildfires.
After two years of devas-
tating wildfires that burned
more than 1.8 million acres in
2018 and 1.2 million acres in
2017, as of Aug. 18, only 51,
acres had burned this year
across state and federal
lands in California.
Late spring rains, cooler
summer temperatures and
fewer extreme wind events,
among other factors, have
combined to help keep the
state from burning uncon-
trollably, experts say.
But weary fire officials
know that can change at any
moment — all it takes is an
intense wind event or a pro-
longed heat wave and then a
spark.
Times staff writer Alex
Wigglesworth contributed
to this report.Wildfire
threat eases
in Murrieta
By Hannah Fry
and Jaclyn CosgroveTHE TENAJA fire has scorched 2,000 acres, but better weather Friday aided containment. “People can re-
turn to their homes,” said a fire captain, “but they need to be ready at a moment’s notice to evacuate again.”
Irfan KhanLos Angeles TimesEvacuations are lifted
as favorable weather
helps crews get Tenaja
blaze 25% contained.Amid a major outbreak of
severe lung illness linked to
vaping, health officials an-
nounced Friday that five
people across the country
have died from the mysteri-
ous disease, including one in
Los Angeles County.
In recent weeks, federal
health officials have been in-
vestigating severe symp-
toms, including chest pain,
shortness of breath and
vomiting, associated with e-
cigarettes. They say they are
unsure of the exact cause,
but urge people to stop vap-
ing until they figure out why
some are coming down with
breathing illnesses.
As of Friday, there were
450 possible cases of severe
pulmonary disease related
to vaping across 33 states,
said officials from the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. Since the
first cases were reported in
April, there have been five
deaths, one each in Oregon,
Indiana, Illinois and Minne-
sota as well as the case in
L.A. County, officials said.
The person who died in
L.A. County was older than
55 and had other chronic
health conditions, local offi-
cials said. Twelve people in
the county have been hospi-
talized for e-cigarette-re-
lated illnesses, one-third of
whom were older adults and
almost all of whom had
vaped using THC, the psy-
choactive compound in mar-
ijuana, officials said.
“Today we’re issuing a
warning to all residents
about the use of these devic-
es as potentially harmful to
proper lung function,” L.A.
County public health direc-tor Barbara Ferrer said at a
news conference Friday.
“Stop vaping now.”
Nationwide, patients di-
agnosed with the mysteri-
ous illness reported e-ciga-
rette use prior to becoming
sick, said Dr. Dana Meaney-
Delman, who is overseeing
the CDC’s response to the
outbreak. Most had vaped
with THC, some with a mix-
ture of THC and nicotine,
and a smaller number with
only nicotine, she said.
So far, no specific devices
or chemicals have been
linked to the outbreak, she
said. “While the investiga-
tion is ongoing, CDC has ad-
vised that individuals con-
sider not using e-cigarettes
— because as of now, this is
the primary means of pre-
venting this severe lung dis-ease,” she said.
Though vaping isn’t new,
it has become more popular
in recent years. Officials say
it is possible that the uptick
in e-cigarette usage and re-
lated illnesses may have al-
lowed officials to spot the
outbreak this year. Illnesses
in previous years may have
been missed or misdiag-
nosed because of their small
numbers, they said.
L.A. County public
health officer Dr. Muntu
Davis compared the revela-
tions about e-cigarettes to
the slow discovery of the
danger of cigarettes decades
ago. “We question whether
we’re on that same path in
terms of vaping,” he said.
Last week, a Los Angeles
teenager began an online
anti-vaping campaign fromher hospital bed, where she
says she landed because of
vaping. Her lungs failed and
she had to be put on a venti-
lator, she said.
“Vaping is advertised as
‘a healthier alternative to
smoking’ which is false.
whether it’s nicotine or weed
vaping can be fatal,” she
wrote on Instagram.
Across California, there
have been 57 cases of acute
lung disease among people
with a recent history of vap-
ing since late June, accord-
ing to state health officials.
Ferrer said Friday that
there are studies that show
that 10% of high school stu-
dents vape regularly. “That’s
thousands and thousands of
young people that are vap-
ing, so for me, that’s an emer-
gent issue,” she said.L.A. County death linked to vaping
FIVE DEATHSand potentially hundreds of illnesses nationwide among e-ciga-
rette users have been linked to a mysterious severe pulmonary disease.Mark RalstonAFP/Getty ImagesBy Soumya
Karlamangla