Kreuper, who apologized to the community during Mondays sentencing, also made a Hail Mary plea to the judge for leniency. Home invader ate shrimp, took bath and left $200 for broke King Charles to evict Harry and Meghan from Frogmore Cottage and give to Andrew, 'Elvis' star Austin Butler was rushed to ER after 'body just started shutting down', Drug-resistant stomach bug spreading across US: 'Serious public health alert', Meghan Markle, Prince Harry have first night out since bombshell Spare released, Jordyn Woods supports Selena Gomez amid singers feud with Kylie Jenner, Hailey Bieber, RHONJ recap: Jennifer Aydin mocks Rachel Fudas terrible nose job, Heroic bus driver saves student from passing car, Savannah Guthrie Rushed Out Of Today After Testing Positive For COVID-19 During Live Broadcast, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry have first night out since bombshell 'Spare' released. The offices of the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California revealed that she had used funds raised for the school for personal expenses as well as gambling. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, was charged Tuesday with wire fraud and money laundering for ripping off St. James Catholic School for a period of 10 years ending in September 2018, according to a press release from the US Attorneys Office in the Central District of California. As principal, Kreuper was responsible for the money the school garnered in tuition, fees, and charitable donations. It is believed the nuns used that money to spend on travel and gambling at casinos over the years. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Nun stops burglary with quick thinking and prayers: This is Gods property, Sister Andre, the worlds oldest living person, dies at 118, I was a celibate nun for 24 years then fell in love with a Catholic monk, Priest accused of inviting two nuns to take part in a threesome. Despite taking a vow of poverty, an 80-year-old nun was sentenced on Monday for stealing more than $800,000 to pay for personal expenses, including gambling trips. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, a former principal at St James Catholic School in Torrance, California, used tuition fees and donations to subsidize casino gambling expenses and credit. . However, Sister Kreuper wasnt alone in her scheme. Wasnt it weird that she and her friends won every single raffle. Basically, for the last three and a half years, shes been driving her fellow sisters to doctors appointments and things like that. The fraud came to light after the accused, Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Chang . Last updated on: February 7, 2022, 08:42h. Our Sisters take full responsibility for the choices they made and are subject to the law., The order said that they were imposing their own kind of punishment on Kreuper and on Chang: Canonical Restrictions have been imposed. Sister Mary Margaret Gambling. St. James Catholic SchoolSister Mary Margaret Kreuper embezzled $835,339 in the schools tuition, fees, and charitable donations for her personal expenses. (Youtube/KCAL) Listen But this week, prosecutors said Sister Mary Margaret, 79, had agreed to plead guilty to stealing more than. At OUSC you will find the most trusted sites to play with cash and the best real money games. Police said they were still carrying out their own investigation. She'd taught fifth grade at Our Lady of Las Vegas . Most of the money came from school fundraisers; some came from a tuition hike. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of two years, but US District Judge Otis D. Wright II said during Mondays sentencing that he also struggled to find the proper sentence for the nun, and even said she was one heck of a teacher., You can be proud of that, Wright said, according to the LA Times. She also managed several of the schools bank accounts, including one that had been set up to pay the living expenses of the other nuns who worked there. Kreuper claimed the school was always strapped for cash, then funneled donations into shell accounts that she and Chang would use to fund trips to Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? She confessed to causing losses to St. James Catholic School totaling $835,339 over the course of the scheme, the statement said. He said some former St. James Catholic School students even wrote letters to the judge in support of their former teacher and principal. But in fact, the sisters were only depositing some of the checks that came in. https://t.co/fsUwStYj3J. Sisters Mary Margaret Kreuper and Lana Chang, the former a former principal at St. James Catholic School in Torrance, Los Angeles County, confessed to stealing $500,000 from the school to fund . The lawyers added that she has been suffering from a mental illness that clouded her judgment and is very remorseful.. Name, email and comment will be stored in our database. Bobby Kent And The Murder That Inspired The Cult Classic Film "Bully", What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch, Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Kreuper is the schools former principal. Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. Casino.org is the worlds leading independent online gaming authority, providing trusted online casino We do know that they had a pattern of going on trips. People gamble in a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in this illustrative image. Kreuper pleaded guilty in July to federal wire fraud and money laundering charges. Some of them said they couldnt understand why the school had been operating on shoestring budget while Sister Mary Margaret and Sister Lana had been going on gambling sprees. pic.twitter.com/Gcbn0WRky5, Karen Devine (@KarenDevineKESQ) December 11, 2018. Bank records show Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Chang had been embezzling funds from St. James Catholic School in Torrance for at least a decade, the Press-Telegram reported.. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, was sentenced to one year and one day for fraud and money laundering. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper was 47 years old and had been a Catholic educator for more than 19 years when she came to St. James School in 1988. We've received your submission. Prosecutor said she also admitted to falsifying the schools financial records. One of the things she said when she was first confronted by the LA Archdiocese and even before law enforcement got involved was she did it in part because she believes priests get paid better than nuns, Kumar told The Post. After reading about the retired nun who stole over $800,000 to support her gambling habit, learn about the dead priest whose DNA could help solve a nun's decades-old murder. Church officials expressed willingness to forgive the two sisters for embezzling half a million dollars from the church. Ad Choices, That Lying, Gambling, Embezzling Nun Pleads Guilty. Alexander also pointed out that the two nuns had routinely lied to parents at the school about how they were paying for their vacations and their gambling trips. Many of the letters I cited and many of the people who spoke, talked about wanting something more from their childrens education. The World's Online Gaming Authority Since 1995, Gambling Nuns Embezzled $500,000 from California School, Blew it On Casino Junkets, Gambling Nun Gets One Year in Prison for Stealing $835k from L.A. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, first made headlines in 2018 after she and another nun were found to have taken as much as $500,000 to finance gambling trips to Las The rest, they were depositing into a separate account and using for their own purposes. Kreuper claimed she had a rich uncle who paid for the trips. Then, read about the Missouri nun who smuggled two pounds of cocaine and blamed her internet boyfriend for doing so. Kreupers crimes occurred during her role as the schools principal, a position from which she retired in 2018. Sister Mary Margaret worked at the school for 29 years. A. Church officials said that both Kreuper and Chang confessed to taking the money, and expressed remorse, asking for forgiveness and prayers. A California nun will plead guilty to swindling over $800,000 from the Catholic elementary school she ran to help pay for her gambling trips, federal prosecutors said. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. But the Catholic church is glad to have a scandal that doesn't involve boy-rape, so they've got that going for them. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper admitted embezzling $835,000 from St James Catholic School in the LA suburb of Torrance. In 1940, she was 2 years old and lived in Belmont, Ohio, with her father, mother, 2 brothers, and sister. Parents have acknowledged that there were a number of red flags at St. James, but no one wants to assume the worst of nuns. Seemingly in the clear after that, she used the embezzled cash for expenses that the order would not have approved, much less paid for from Nevada casinos to paying off credit cards. Archdiocese lawyer Marge Graf said the nuns' order agreed to pay the school full restitution and impose "severe sanctions" on Kreuper and Chang. Its unclear what will happen to Chang, or whether shes even involved in any ongoing investigation. Mary was a precocious child. An 80-year-old nun who gambled away more than $835,000 in school funds was sentenced to twelve months and a day in federal prison Monday, according to a press release from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). We do know they had a pattern of going to casinos, and the reality is, they used the account as their personal account, the attorney told the crowd at the meeting. Diverting embezzled funds into secret accounts, Kreuper used the money "to pay for expenses that the order would not have approved, much less paid for," including large gambling expenses and trips to Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Temecula, according to her plea agreement. After charges were filed, her attorneys issued a statement saying Sister Mary Margaret suffered "from mental illness that clouded her judgment and caused her to do something that she otherwise would not have done. Shawn graduated from Batesville High School in 1991 before attending Ball State University and receiving his BS from . So shes basically under house arrest, which she accepts.. They were angry that their children had been denied new facilities at the school because of Kreupers transgressions. The 80-year-old nun also was ordered to pay a total of. Would love your thoughts, please comment. Concern over the schools finances started to increase as the Archdiocese of Los Angeles began to prepare for the change of leadership in 2018, the archdiocese said in a statement. Southern California authorities have revealed two nuns allegedly embezzling up to $500K which was parlayed . The audit uncovered a long-forgotten account into which Kreuper would divert checks made out to the school. She ran the institution on a shoestring while plundering an account containing tuition fees and charitable donations over a period of ten years. The archdiocese informed authorities of the matter in 2018 when financial reviews during a change in leadership showed a substantial amount of school funds had been misappropriated for personal use by Sister Mary Margaret during her tenure as school principal, church officials said. This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Torrance and Sister Lana Chang. Until this last spring, Kreuper was the principal of St. James Catholic School in Torrance and Chang was. "I was wrong, and I am profoundly sorry for the pain and the suffering that I have caused so many people.". Click to reveal Kreuper has admitted she took the money and expressed remorse. She also admitted to falsifying monthly and annual financial reports, and to telling school employees to alter and destroy financial records during an audit, the prosecutors statement and court documents said. Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, was charged Tuesday with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, according to the U.S. attorney's office for the Central District of California. But not all the parishioners were as understanding. Kreuper, who was the principal of the school for 28 years, agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with prosecutors, the release said. LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) Mary Margaret Kreuper, a now-retired nun who was the principal of St. James Catholic School in Torrance, has agreed to plead guilty to fraud and money laundering charges. The first steps with free slots are easy, but once you are ready to switch to real . ", But a 12-year-old said Kreuper was "just like any other robber.". There have been calls among some parents for the pair to be charged while others said they should be forgiven. Her religious order, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, which according to court documents was paying for her living expenses, said in a statement on Wednesday that it would not comment until the legal process was completed. The statement pledged that the order would work with the diocese to discover the full amount that had been taken from the school; they pledged to restore all of the money that was stolen. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, was charged Tuesday with wire fraud and money laundering for ripping off St. James Catholic School for a period of 10 years ending in September 2018,. She had reportedly worked there for 20 years before both retired in 2018, shortly before their scandal was revealed. But officials from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles told parents and alumni of the school that auditors have not been able to trace all of the money trail. Kreuper is also accused of directing school employees to alter and destroy financial records while the audit was in process. 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CA: 2 Nuns Accused of Stealing Substantial Amount of Money From South Bay Catholic School.Principal, Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, and teacher Sister Lana Chang.Substantial amount of school funds for their personal use.https://t.co/nIiuz3JiDR. Kreuper and Chang are both members of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. news, guides, reviews and information since 1995. Eventually, a forensic accountant discovered that there was a half-million dollars missing from the schools accounts. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. Prosecutors said Kreuper, who was the schools principal for 28 years, diverted funds to pay for expenses that her order the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet would never have approved, including large gambling expenses from casino trips and credit card charges she made from 2008 to September 2018. Sister Lana Chang worked alongside Sister Kreuper for 20 years, at least 10 of which they spent embezzling the schools money together. A great part of her early education came from her mother, who consulted the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives for advice and commissioned him to write De Institutione Feminae Christianae, a treatise on the . At least I hope you do.. The embezzlement helped to fuel her gambling habit. She was the principal. But all the while, they were using school funds to pay for their jaunts. 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It remains unclear which years specifically she embezzled funds from the school during her 28-year tenure there, though she did admit to doing so for over a decade. She will be under two years supervision when she is released, Kumar said. Jack Alexander of Redondo Beach said that the pair would often go traveling and gambling, claiming they had been given the money by a rich relative. The nuns funneled hundreds of thousands of fundraising dollars into a shell account to support a gambling habit. Instead, the school's principal, Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, was stealing the money and using it to bankroll her gambling habit, federal prosecutors said, violating her vow of. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper was sentenced to a year in prison after she admitted to stealing more than $835,000 from a Southern California school to fund her gambling addiction. He was unhappy with the churchs decision not to prosecute. Gambling Nun Who Embezzled $800,000+ of School Funds Gets Off Lightly With 366-Day Jail Sentence Judge Wright II sentenced Kreuper to one year and a day in a federal prison She must also pay $825,338.57 in restitution for the money she embezzled Kreuper admitted using the school funds to pay for "large gambling expenses" All rights reserved. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The sisters stole a total of $500,000, or half a million dollars, officials said. Your IP: Parents said the two nuns were big on moral fortitude . Kreuper's attorney Mark Byrne explained that his client, who retired in 2018, has been under strict supervision at her convent. A federal judge sentenced Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, a nun and former Catholic school principal, to a year in prison for embezzling more than $835,000 from the school she ran to fund a more secular lifestyle including gambling trips. The nun was in charge of overseeing tuition money, fees the school received and charitable donations, prosecutors said. Regardless, dont trust any nun who absolutely crushes Texas Holdem, and read Flynns original story here. This snapshot of Mary Margaret Bartock's life was captured by the 1940 U.S. Census. While Kreuper spent the schools funds on gambling trips, the former principal continued to ask parents to donate more money to the school on top of their $6,000 annual tuition. Ultimately Kreuper admitted to stealing over $835,000. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, of Los Angeles, will plead guilty to fraud and money laundering and faces up to 40 years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. LOS ANGELES, CA The retired principal of a Catholic elementary school in Torrance, who as a nun took a vow of poverty, was sentenced Monday to 12 months and a day behind bars for embezzling more than $835,000 in school funds to support a gambling habit and other personal expenses. She said that she diverted school funds into the St. James convent account and then into its federal credit union savings account. Nuns joining Kreupers, order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, take vows of poverty when they are called to their vocation. As soon as she was confronted, she accepted full responsibility for what she had done and she has cooperated fully with law enforcement and the Archdiocese. The statement also condemned the embezzlement, saying, we will not defend the actions of our Sisters. They were able to get away with it because the school was doing so well, financially, that nobody ever missed the money. Crime Calif. Nun, 80, Sentenced for Stealing More than $800K from Catholic School to Fund Gambling Addiction Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper pleaded guilty for using funds to pay for. The rich uncle was the parents of the St. James students," he said. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper embezzled $835,339 in the schools tuition, fees, and charitable donations for her personal expenses. the dead priest whose DNA could help solve a nuns decades-old murder, the Missouri nun who smuggled two pounds of cocaine. Mary Margaret Kreuper of Los Angeles was sentenced to one year and a day in prison after pleading guilty in July 2021 to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. Shawn is the son of Linda and Bill Flannery born November 25, 1972 in Cincinnati, Ohio. They did not necessarily overlook, but asked to judge her more by her entire life rather than the theft from by St. James (Catholic School). We continue to offer our prayers for all impacted by this matter.. She was running the school that these parents had chosen to send their children [to], and not just for the academics. The Essential Michelle Yeoh Viewing Guide, Donna Kelce Tells Us the Story Behind Her Half-Eagles, Half-Chiefs Jersey, Sex Lives: A Guy Who Draws the Line at Married Men. But this week, prosecutors said Sister Mary Margaret, 79, had agreed to plead guilty to stealing more than $835,000 from a Catholic elementary school to support a gambling habit and to pay for other personal expenses. While other checks were being cashed properly and accounted for, the crooked nun deposited other checks in the secret bank accounts before they were even accounted for by staff. In California, a septuagenarian nun faces up to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal fraud and money laundering charges. Los Angeles Archdiocese of Los Angeles Gambling nuns nuns Las Vegas Saint James Catholic School . Kreuper had retired as the school's principal earlier this year and she dealt with the school fees, which she allegedly withheld and deposited into an account only she and Chang knew about, the paper said. He added that an expert report explained she had a gambling addiction. Officials also say that as they audit started, Sister Mary Margaret started to seem very anxious they say that she even asked people to falsify information for her. "This is merely an explanation.". But many parents were furious when they discovered the diocese had decided not to press charges against Kreuper because she had shown remorse.. Kreuper was the schools principal for 29 years. What happened is wrong. In total, it is believed she stole $835,339 at least that authorities are currently aware of. "At our school, we have initiated additional procedures and oversight policies for financial management and reporting responsibilities," Meyers wrote. The nuns embezzlement first came to light when Sister Mary Margaret was about to retire, according to church officials. Thanks for contacting us. To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com. The nuns apparently told everyone that a rich uncle was paying for their trips. In July 1520, when scarcely four and a half years old, she entertained a visiting French delegation with a performance on the virginals (a type of harpsichord).