Mossimo Gianulli, the fashion designer who along with his actress wife Lori Loughlin is accused in a wide-ranging college admissions scandal, admitted in the past that he lied to his parents about attending the University of Southern California.

As the New York Post reports, Gianulli gave an interview in 2016 published by the fashion blog The Hundreds.

In the interview, Gianulli admits that he lied to his parents about attending USC — while they continued to pay his tuition.

“SC was expensive, so that was how I was starting my company. I used all that cash,” Giannulli said in the interview.

‘I used to have hundreds of thousands of cash in my top drawer in my fraternity house. And I was like, ‘this is kind of too easy. I need a bigger platform. If I had a bigger account base, I could really kill it…'”

CNN confirmed with USC that Gianulli attended the college in 1984 for one semester, but not as a fully enrolled student. He was reportedly given “visitor status” and lived in a fraternity house on campus.

Gianulli and his wife, a former star on the sitcom “Full House,” pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering conspiracy. They are accused of paying a fraudulent nonprofit organization half a million dollars to have their daughters admitted to USC as crew team recruits, though neither daughter is a crew athlete.

[Feature image: Mossimo Gianulli (L), Lori Loughlin (C); AP Photo/Steven Senne]