“I committed a crime, I broke the law, and I have no excuse,” Mary Margaret Kreuper told the court.
Los Angeles:
An elderly nun who stole more than $800,000 to pay for her gambling habits and fund lavish vacations was jailed for a year in California on Monday.
Mary Margaret Kreuper, 80, vowed to live a life of poverty when she made her vows six decades ago.
But as the principal of a Roman Catholic elementary school near Los Angeles, she transferred $835,000 in school funds to pay for gambling in Las Vegas, a court heard.
She also uses the money to make luxury trips to luxury resorts like Lake Tahoe, which gathers connoisseurs for yachting in the summer and skiing in the winter.
“I committed a crime, I broke the law, and I have no excuse,” Kreuper told the court, according to The Los Angeles Times.
She said her crime was “a violation of my oaths, commandments, laws, and above all, the divine trust that so many have placed in me.”
Kreuper admitted to electronic fraud and money laundering in a hearing last year.
The court said how money sent to the school for tuition fees and charitable contributions was instead transferred to secret accounts controlled by Kreuper.
When an audit threatened to expose the conspiracy, Kreuper ordered employees to destroy incriminating documents, the court heard.
The Times reported that when she confronted the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Kreuper argued that priests were paid more than nuns and that she thought she deserved a raise.
Kreuper’s attorney, Mark Byrne, has asked her to be allowed to serve time at the convent where she has been held since her crimes were uncovered in 2018.
He said she was addicted to gambling.
“This is not an excuse for what she did,” he said, according to the Times, “this is merely an explanation.”
District Judge Otis D. Wright II told Kreuper he struggled with what to do with her, and acknowledged she had been a good teacher for decades,
“But somewhere along the line, you’ve just run completely off the road, and I think you get that. At least I hope you do,” he said.
Kreuper was sentenced to 12 months and a day behind bars.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
