This is Mossimo Giannulli, husband to Aunt Becky, father to Olivia Jade and Isabella. Yes, Mossimo, like the Target guy. We'll get to that in a bit.
Everyone is piling on Lori for her part in paying $500,000 to get her daughters into USC, but Mossimo, the Target guy, her husband, is also implicated as well.
Background wise, Mossimo was born in southern California. He goes by "Moss" for short. And no, he DOES NOT have an accent.
Mossimo started his business in 1986 when he was a "fake student" at USC.
Mossimo told his parents he was a student at USC even though he was never actually enrolled there. Instead, Mossimo pocketed his parents' tuition checks to help fund his fashion venture.
His daughter, Olivia Jade (read more about her here), told her dad's college scam story in a recent interview:
"He, like, built his whole entire brand and he wasn’t actually, like — I don't know if I'm supposed to say this — ever enrolled in college. But he, like, faked his way through it and then he started his whole business with tuition money that his parents thought was going to college. That’s, like, such a different time. I don’t know if I was supposed to say that, but it’s okay.”
In an interview with The Hundreds, Mossimo said: “I used to have hundreds of thousands of cash in my top drawer in my fraternity house. 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…’”
The brand became popular in the '90s and went public in 1996 when Mossimo was only 29. According to this Complex story, he made $275 million.
In an interview with The Hundreds, Mossimo said: “Imagine having a stock worth $600 million dollars and you’re fucking running that pig. You get a little coo-coo in the head.”
A Mossimo profile from 2000 in OC Weekly basically called him out for low-key faking his upbringing: "The company has a name and a back story that people love: beach bum made good. Never mind that it's not true. Giannulli was no bum—upper-middle-class family, Corona del Mar High School, ambition."
Mossimo and Lori married in 1997.
They would have their daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella in 1998/1999.
In 2000, Mossimo sold the exclusive rights to Target. He made over $8 million that first year alone.
Mossimo was sold at Target until 2017.
Iconic side note: Paris Hilton and her sister showed up to the Mossimo Target launch in "Got Blow?" shirts.
In 2006, Mossimo sold the brand to Iconix Brand Group. According to a LA Times article, Mossimo made $88 million in cash and stocks.
So, yeah, he was very very very rich.
Nowadays, Mossimo is running a luxury golf fashion brand.
He started selling colored golf gloves because he realized that there were only white and black gloves in the golf market.
He also makes colored golf shoes.
He has since expanded into high end golf clothing wear.
Mossimo was arrested on Tuesday and released on Tuesday night. He and Lori are accused of paying $500,000 for both of their daughters to get into USC as crew recruits. Both of the girls don't even row.
