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We’d been waiting for hours in a drab beige hallway, hunched over phones or laptops, when we were herded into a windowless courtroom and packed into pew-style seats.

And then, there she was, the actress Lori Loughlin. She wore large glasses and a cream mockneck sweater. She sat behind a pane of glass, alongside federal agents and a few other people accused of committing crimes against the United States.

Ms. Loughlin had surrendered to the authorities in Los Angeles earlier in the day, after she and her husband, the fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, were charged as part of a vast college admissions fraud investigation that has ballooned into a national scandal.