BOSTON – A judge released actress Felicity Huffman on $250,000 bail but restricted her travel to the continental U.S. after the star was one of 50 people charged in the largest-ever college admissions conspiracy prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Huffman appeared in federal court Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles following a morning arrest. Husband William H. Macy attended his wife’s initial court appearance. He has not been charged in the scandal and authorities have not said why.

Federal prosecutors charged 33 affluent parents, including CEOs and actress Lori Loughlin, nine college athletics coaches and others in the sweeping bribery case to enter elite universities and colleges. The elaborate conspiracy involved cheating on the SAT and ACT and parents paying coaches "enormous sums" to get their children into schools by fabricating their athletic credentials.

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Loughlin is expected to appear in court Wednesday. After that, legal proceedings will move to Boston, Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the United States Attorney’s Office tells USA TODAY. Huffman was one of about a dozen people taken into custody Tuesday.

Late Tuesday, roughly 50 reporters and photographers waited for defendants to exit the courthouse as skies darkened. At one point, Huffman was seen walking toward the main exit, but facing a rush of videographers, she turned around and did not exit through the doors.

Huffman, best known for her role on TV's "Desperate Housewives," is accused of paying $15,000 to a made-up charitable organization that then helped her daughter cheat on the SATs. Huffman also discussed the scheme in a recorded phone call with a cooperating witness, according to the investigation.

Loughlin, who starred in the 1990s sitcom "Full House," is facing the same felony charges – conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. Prosecutors say Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, another defendant, paid bribes of $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as crew team recruits at the University of Southern California even though neither participated in the sport.

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As part of the nationwide conspiracy, coaches agreed to pretend that the children of parents who paid bribes were highly recruited athletes when they didn't even compete in that particular sport, prosecutors said.

More individuals, including additional parents, could be later charged amid the ongoing multi-state FBI investigation, which took on the code name "Operation Varsity Blues" by law enforcement when it was launched 10 months ago.

The schools, including Yale, Georgetown and Stanford universities, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Texas and Wake Forest University, are not targets of the sweeping investigation, prosecutors said. And no students were charged. Authorities said in many cases the teenagers were not aware of the fraud.

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Others charged included three people who organized the scams, two ACT and SAT exam administrators, one exam proctor, and one college administrator. Among the parents were Gordon Caplan of Greenwich, Connecticut, a co-chairman of an international law firm based in New York; Jane Buckingham, CEO of a boutique marketing company in Los Angeles; Gregory Abbott of New York, founder and chairman of a packaging company; and Manuel Henriquez, CEO of a finance company based in Palo Alto, California.

“This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud,” said Andrew Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, which is leading the prosecution. “There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy, and I will add there will not be a separate criminal justice system either."

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Four people arrested in New York City in the college admissions prosecution have each been released on $500,000 bail after brief appearances in Manhattan federal court. Lawyers for Abbott, Caplan, and Elizabeth and Manuel Henriquez declined to comment after their clients appeared before a magistrate judge to face charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

A prosecutor had sought $1 million bail against Abbott, a New York founder of a food and beverage packaging company, claiming he was a risk to flee.

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Macy, who is married to Huffman, was not among those charged. But an affidavit says Huffman's "spouse" participated in conversations at their Los Angeles home with a confidential witness about the scheme.

The University of Southern California responded to the charges by firing senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel and legendary water polo coach Jovan Vavic, a 16-time national champion who has led the team since 1995. Both were charged in the scheme. The school also opened an internal investigation and a review of its admissions process.

Wake Forest University says it has suspended its head volleyball coach Bill Ferguson amid the investigation. Ferguson has been placed on administrative leave after being accused of accepting $100,000 to recruit a student who had been on the North Carolina school's wait list.

“For every student admitted through fraud, an honest genuinely talented student was rejected," Lelling said.

At the center of the case, according to federal prosecutors, was an admissions consultant named William "Rick" Singer, who pleaded guilty Tuesday in a Boston federal court to conspiracy charges of racketeering, money laundering, defrauding the United States and obstruction of justice.

Prosecutors say Singer operated a sham college counseling group called "The Key," based in Newport Beach, California, which he used to accept more than $25 million in payments masked as "charitable contributions" from parents from 2011 through Feb. 2019. He's accused of keeping some of the money for himself and funneling millions to coaches and others to guarantee admission to top schools.

In return for the parents’ bribes, the coaches would use roster “slots” that the school gave their teams to admit students that Singer had identified.

Parents paid Singer between $100,000 and $6.5 million to carry out the athletics admissions scheme, according to prosecutors, with most paying between $250,000 and $400,000 per student.

Singer worked with parents to fabricate athletic profiles for their children that boasted fake credentials, honors and participation in elite club teams. Sometimes it involved staged photographs, prosecutors say, or even doctored photos where a student's face would be posted onto a stock photo of an athlete pulled from the internet.

In addition, prosecutors say some parents paid Singer between $15,000 and $75,000 to either take the ACT for their child or correct their children's answers after the test to achieve a higher score. He did this by paying Mark Riddell of Florida, another defendant in the case, who bribed two exam administrators, also defendants.

"We’re not talking about donating a building so that a school’s more likely to take your son or daughter. We’re talking about deception and fraud – fake test scores, fake athletics credentials, fake photographs, bribed college officials," Lelling said.

Prosecutors brought the charges in federal court because Singer is accused of using the mail and overnight carriers to send bribes and doctored test forms, and of using his tax-exempt charity to facilitate bribes. The other defendants are charged with conspiracy in those crimes. Each of the colleges that are involved receives more than $10,000 in federal grant funds.

Elizabeth Much, a representative for Loughlin, said she had no information on the case when first contacted by USA TODAY. The news organization has also reached out to a rep for Huffman for comment.

In addition to Singer, John Vandemoer, the head sailing coach at Stanford, also pleaded guilty Tuesday to accepting bribes.

Among the college coaches charged is former Yale women’s soccer coach, Rudy Meredith, who resigned as coach in November after 24 years in that position. He's accused of taking $1.2 million after he admitted a recruit who had never played soccer.

Also charged was former Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst, now head coach of the University of Rhode Island, which placed Ernst on administrative leave Tuesday. The allegations only involve his time at Georgetown, which he left in 2017 after irregularities in his recruitment practices surfaced.

Lisa Brown, vice president and general counsel at Georgetown, said the university is "deeply troubled" by the allegations against Ernst and will take "appropriate action" after reviewing the details of the investigation. She said the school was not aware of the alleged criminal activity until they were approached by the U.S attorney's office.

"Mr. Ernst’s alleged actions are shocking, highly antithetical to our values, and violate numerous University policies and ethical standards," she said in a letter to the Georgetown community.

Prosecutors in Massachusetts took the lead in the case because of its Boston connections. Phone calls and meetings took place in the city, two of the defendants live there and fake test scores were submitted to Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern University.

Joseph Bonavolonta, FBI special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston field office, said 300 special agents from the FBI and IRS set out Tuesday to arrest 46 individuals involved in the scheme. He said 38 were taken into custody, seven were working toward a surrender, and one is being actively pursued.

“We believe all of them – parents, coaches and facilitators – lied, cheated and covered up their crimes at the expense of hard-working students,” he said.

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He said the FBI’s investigation began last May, when FBI investigators found evidence of a “large-scale elaborate fraud” while working an unrelated undercover case.

Bonavolonta called the charges leveled Tuesday evidence of a “rigged system” that is robbing students across the country at a fair shot to get into some of the nation’s most elite schools.

“We believe everyone charged here today had a role in fostering a culture of corruption and greed that created an uneven playing field for students trying to get into these schools the right way," he said.

He said the actions of the parents were "without a doubt insidious, selfish and shameful," adding that: "Today’s arrests should be a warning to others: You can’t pay to play, you can’t lie and cheat to get ahead, because you will get caught.”

Contributing: The Associated Press, Andrea Mandell, Kristin Lam