Lori Loughlin's daughter under fire online over college cheating scandal

Image: Lori Loughlin, right, and her daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli attend
Lori Loughlin, right, and her daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli attend a gala in Beverly Hills, California, on Feb. 27, 2018. Copyright Axelle / Bauer-Griffin FilmMagic file
Copyright Axelle / Bauer-Griffin FilmMagic file
By Ben Kesslen with NBC News U.S. News
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Loughlin's daughter, Olivia Jade, is now under scrutiny over past online comments such as, "I don't really care about school."

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The indictment of 50 people, including "Full House" star Lori Loughlin, in a college exam cheating plot, led to the resurfacing of past comments from her daughter, YouTube celebrity and social media influencer Olivia Jade.

It also sparked an online discussion about what many see as a college admissions system that favors the wealthy.

Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 to bolster their two daughters' chances of gaining admission to University of Southern California (USC), the indictment claims.

But one of the daughters, Olivia Giannulli, who goes by the name Olivia Jade and is now in her first year at USC, apparently didn't always want to go to college.

In 2018, Olivia Jade, who has almost 2 million YouTube subscribers, said in a video: "I don't know how much of school I'm gonna attend ... I do want the experience of like game days, partying … I don't really care about school, as you guys all know."

She later posted an apology video, entitled, "im sorry," where she apologized for the comments and said, "A lot of people like to attack me for the way I've grown up because it's really different from a lot of people, and so anything I say that's remotely ignorant or bratty or something that I genuinely don't mean, it gets so much backlash."

Olivia Jade also said she felt "really really bad" about the comments, but she still expressed in the video that attending college wasn't really her dream.

NBC News was unable to immediately reach either Olivia Jade Giannulli or Lori Laughlin for comment.

In a recent podcast interview on the "Zach Sang Show," Olivia Jade said she attends USC "mostly because my parents really wanted me to go."

She also tweetedlast month that making YouTube videos is her "#1 passion." "I promise I'd way rather be filming 24/7 than sitting in 6 hours of classes straight," she said.

A successful social media influencer with millions of followers across platforms, Olivia Jade even appears to have leveraged her newfound status as a college student to attract advertisers.

On Instagram, she posted a picturesponsored by Smile Direct Club, an online seller of orthodontic retainers, saying, "For back-to-school season, I've been using a doctor-directed, at-home invisible aligner treatment with @SmileDirectClub."

Olivia Jade also posted pictures of her in her dorm room in an ad for Amazon Student.

View this post on InstagramOfficially a college student! It’s been a few weeks since I moved into my dorm and I absolutely love it. I got everything I needed from Amazon with @primestudent and had it all shipped to me in just two-days. #ad #primestudent #allonamazon

A post shared by OLIVIA JADE (@oliviajade) on Sep 17, 2018 at 2:42pm PDT

The FBI's release of the indictment Tuesday sparked dialogue online about racial and income disparities in college admissions.

Clint Smith, a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate at Harvard, posted that wealthy parents can "buy their way" into elite schools, while students of color and low-income students at such colleges are often made to feel "undeserving" of their admission.

Many on Twitter were quick to join Smith, saying affirmative action for disadvantaged groups of students gets unfairly criticized.

People also cited cases like that of Kelley Williams-Bolar, a black mother in Ohio who went went to prison for lying about her residency so her daughters could attend school in a more well-regarded district.

In a statement, USC said it is aware of the federal investigation and that the college is "conducting an international investigation and will take employment actions as appropriate." The university also said it is reviewing its admission processes to "ensure that such actions do not occur going forward."

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Olivia Jade's Instagram has been barraged with negative comments and jokes since news broke about her mother's indictment.

On her post for Direct Smile Club, @brihende wrote, "your smile may be straight but your family is crooked." Lori Loughlin had deleted her Instagram account by Tuesday afternoon, and Olivia Jade's sister, Bella, made her account private.

On Olivia's most recent post, @starsrborn wrote, "Honestly the fact that you and your sister stole spots at USC from someone who worked hard in high school is beyond disgusting."

Before Olivia Jade disabled commenting on her posts, the remark received 3,840 likes.

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