Disgraced Fuller House star Lori Loughlin is living on a diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and is ‘anxious’ about catching Covid-19 in jail, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The 56-year-old was booked into Federal Correctional Institution Dublin for a two-month stretch on October 30 after being convicted of mail fraud for paying crooked consultant William Singer $500,000 to get her daughters into UCLA.
Now a former inmate turned prison consultant with clients banged up at the Northern California lockup has revealed that Loughlin is ‘doing okay’ but is desperately worried about catching coronavirus while inside.
Holli Coulman, 50, of Dallas, Texas, told DailyMail.com: ‘She’s not crying every night but I have been told she has high anxiety.’
Lori Loughlin is ‘doing okay’ in prison but is desperately worried about catching coronavirus while inside
The 56-year-old was booked into Federal Correctional Institution Dublin for a two-month sentence on October 30
‘My clients who are there have said no crying but high anxiety – not about the prisoners but the Covid and the issues with that,’ she said.
According to Bureau of Prisons data, Dublin has administered 326 Covid tests to date, with 16 positive cases and 12 still pending.
Former inmate turned prison consultant Holli Coulman, 50, told DailyMail.com, ‘She’s not crying every night but I have been told she has high anxiety’
Loughlin is missing her family after phone calls were slashed to three a week to ensure social distancing and personal prison visits suspended due to the worsening infection rate in Alameda County – family access had been due to resume on October 15.
Other Covid restrictions mean the women are confined to their four-person cells and banned from working, while showers have also been reduced to three times a week.
Food now consists of a monotonous diet of dry cereal and fruit for breakfast and grab bags containing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner.
Despite the lack of things to do, prisoners are still woken at 5am when the lights switch on automatically and are expected to be ready for a headcount with their beds made by 6.30am.
Emails from fellow inmates, seen by DailyMail.com, also note a lack of social distancing within the shared cells due to limited space and claim that prisoners are not being given extra soap for handwashing.
Coulman, who spent time in FCI Victorville near Los Angeles after being convicted of credit card fraud in 2015, now works as a paralegal for the Dallas County Public Defender but runs a prison consultancy business in her spare time.
She is also working with the ACLU of Northern California to petition the jail to give early release on compassionate grounds to some of her clients.
Loughlin had asked to do her time on home arrest due to the pandemic but was denied by the judge because she has no known health problems.
It also means she does not meet the Bureau of Prisons criteria for compassionate release and will have to serve her entire two-month sentence at Dublin.
Loughlin is missing her family after phone calls were slashed to three a week and personal prison visits suspended due to the pandemic
Coulman told DailyMail.com that the reality of prison life has come as a shock to Loughlin.
She said: ‘It’s not being able to go and pick up the phone when the phones are supposed to be on and go call somebody. She’s alone.
‘From a nice home to laying on a mat wearing a uniform. You’re wearing a uniform that is a men’s uniform. She’s wearing boots. Not Gucci shoes, she’s wearing boots.
The couple paid $500,000 to get their daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella into USC
‘These are things she’s not used to.’
She added: ‘Dublin is very small – it is a standalone [jail]. It is one of the older prisons in the US so inside, it is like a rundown community college government building with old tile, old lights, fluorescence.
‘It’s dirty. You never can get rid of the dirt. It is not a pleasant place. They do have some grass in the prison grounds but if you can just imagine, it’s old furniture, metal furniture, nothing aesthetically, remotely modern.’
Dublin, which houses 868 inmates in its main building and satellite camp, is a low-security Federal prison that only accepts women.
Famous former inmates include Patty Hearst, Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman who spent two weeks in the facility last year after being convicted of fraud due to her role in the college admissions scandal.
But prison life has changed during the pandemic, with the jail on permanent lockdown and new prisoners expected to spend their first two weeks quarantining in a makeshift building – put up after Dublin experienced a rash of Covid cases earlier this year.
Loughlin has now been released into the general population but because the prison is on lockdown, her routine is similar to the quarantine regime.
Coulman told DailyMail.com: ‘Right now the women are on lockdown. All the facilities across the US are on lockdown. That means women are locked in their units.
‘In Dublin, women live four to a cubicle. These women are locked in, so they’re not able to get up and go to a job that they would have been working on, maybe in the kitchen.
‘Only a handful of people are. So they have to stay locked in their facility all day. They don’t necessarily have access to showers right now – they’re limited at three days a week.
‘Phone calls have been cut, email. So limited contact with family and even legal counsel.’
Her husband Mossimo Giannulli (pictured on Wednesday) reported to prison on Thursday to begin serving his five-month sentence for bribing his daughters’ way into college
Loughlin’s husband Mossimo Giannulli, 57, is also in jail – at low-security men’s lockup FCI Lompoc near Santa Barbara where he is spending five months for his role in the college admissions scandal.
He reported to the California prison on November 19 and, like Loughlin, will spend his first two weeks quarantined with a group of fellow new inmates.
Lompoc has fared worse than Dublin during the pandemic, with 944 inmates tested for Covid-19 – 701 of whom received positive results.