Felicity Huffman's Legal Issues, Explained

Felicity Huffman's character, Lynette Scavo, in "Desperate Housewives," is notoriously adamant about controlling her family's life. Her stay-at-home motherhood in Season 1 was chaotic, as she tried to wrangle her boys into behaving. Even when she left her full-time momhood behind to have a successful career, something fans loved about Lynette was that she'd do anything for her kids. It seems that's a trait Huffman didn't part with when she said goodbye to Wisteria Lane.

In the 2019 college admissions scandal that swept the nation (a scandal so big that it was even the topic of a Netflix documentary), it was revealed that Huffman paid to raise her daughter's SAT scores. She was one of the big-name parents — which also included fellow actor Lori Loughlin — who were part of the nationwide conspiracy that became known as "Operation Varsity Blues" during the federal investigation. The criminal scheme involved changing the scores of students' college entrance exams and bartering for admission into some of the country's most elite universities, including, but not limited to, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown.

In 2017, Felicity Huffman paid William "Rick" Singer, a college counselor and sole racketeer behind the criminal scheme, $15,000 to falsify her daughter's SAT exam scores. According to a criminal complaint, her score improved by 400 points, compared to her last practice exam. "It seemed like — and I know this seems crazy — at the time, that that was my only option to give my daughter a future," Huffman told ABC-7 Eyewitness News in 2023. She was charged with and pled guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud and was sentenced in September 2019 to a month in prison, along with a $20,000 fine and a year of parole. The actor ultimately served 11 days in prison, paid a $30,000 fine, and completed community service.

As for life outside a cell, Huffman says she's getting used to her new existence. The actor told The Guardian in 2024: "It's been hard. Sort of like your old life died and you died with it," referring to her acting career, adding that she had done a pilot for ABC that didn't get picked up. In the same year, Huffman made her stage debut starring in the revival of Taylor Mac's "Hir," where she played Paige, a mother who is liberated from an abusive marriage. "I'm grateful to be here," she told the outlet in the U.K. theater she called home for the early part of 2024. "But how am I? I guess I'm still processing."