Fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, who was indicted along with his wife Lori Loughlin for allegedly paying bribes to get their daughters into USC, may have misrepresented his own college education to his father in an attempt to get money.

CNN uncovered a 2016 article on a fashion blog that states that Giannulli "not only convinced his dad that he was a student by falsifying report cards, Mossimo got him to fork over fees with fake tuition bills."

The article states that he told his father he was studying at USC, but "used this seed money to initiate his foray into the T-shirt biz."

"SC was expensive, so that was how I was starting my company. I used all that cash," Giannulli is quoted as saying "unapologetically" to the author.

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"I used to have hundreds of thousands of cash in my top drawer in my fraternity house," he said. "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.'"

This T-shirt business eventually turned into Giannulli's prominent clothing company "Mossimo."

According to CNN, Giannulli was never a fully matriculated student at USC, and was there for the spring semester in 1984 for a non-degree program that had "no formal admission requirements."

USC did not share if Giannulli actually took any classes there.

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Giannulli and Loughlin's daughter Olivia Jade told the story of her father's apparent deception during a podcast that was released four days before her parents were charged in the college admissions scandal.

"I don't know if I am supposed to say this, sorry dad," she said. "But he was like, never enrolled in college, he faked his way through it. Yeah, so then he started his whole business with tuition money that his parents thought was going to college."

Giannulli and Loughlin have pleaded not guilty to the bribery charges, and both of them could face jail time if found guilty.

Eric Ting is an SFGATE staff writer. Email him at eric.ting@sfgate.com and follow him on Twitter

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