US actress Felicity Huffman and Mossimo Giannulli, who is the husband of another TV star Lori Loughlin, have appeared in court after being charged following the discovery of a massive elite college admission scam.
Huffman, Giannulli and Loughlin are among 50 people accused of paying bribes to get their children into America’s top colleges.
By Tuesday, at least nine athletic coaches and 33 parents were charged over the scandal.
Huffman was among dozens who were arrested.
The Desperate Housewives star was released after posting a $250,000 (£191,000) bond after an appearance in federal court in Los Angeles.
Her husband, actor William H. Macy, has not been charged, but an FBI agent stated in an affidavit that he was in the room when Huffman first heard the pitch from a scam insider.
Fashion designer Giannulli was released in Los Angeles after posting a $1 million (£760,000) bond.
It was unclear if his wife, Full House star Loughlin, would turn herself in.
On Tuesday, authorities revealed that they had uncovered a bombshell scandal involving parents cheating the admissions process at eight sought-after schools.
The parents are accused of bribing college coaches and other insiders to get their children into selective schools, authorities said.
At the centre of the scheme was admissions consultant William "Rick" Singer, founder of the Edge College & Career Network of Newport Beach, California, according to authorities.
Singer has pleaded guilty and his lawyer, Donald Heller, said his client intends to cooperate fully with prosecutors and is "remorseful and contrite and wants to move on with his life."
Prosecutors said that parents paid Singer big money from 2011 up until just last month to bribe coaches and administrators to falsely make their children look like star athletes to boost their chances of getting accepted.
The consultant also hired ringers to take college entrance exams for students, and paid off insiders at testing centres to correct students' answers.
Some parents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and some as much as $6.5 million (£4.96 million) to guarantee their children's admission, officials said.
"These parents are a catalogue of wealth and privilege," US Attorney Andrew Lelling said.
The coaches involved worked at schools such as Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, Wake Forest, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Stanford's sailing coach John Vandemoer pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Boston.
A former Yale soccer coach pleaded guilty before the documents went public and helped build the case against others.
No students have been charged with authorities saying that in many cases the teenagers were unaware of what was going on.
Several of the colleges involved made no mention of taking any action against the students.
Several defendants, including Huffman, were charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
"For every student admitted through fraud, an honest and genuinely talented student was rejected," Mr Lelling said.
He added that the investigation is continuing and authorities believe other parents were involved.
The IRS is also investigating, since some parents allegedly disguised the bribes as charitable donations.
