But how do we define who is a minister and who is not? He had planned to be in Washington for Monday's argument. "The Gambling Nuns" saga is unlikely to come up at the Supreme Court, but it certainly is on Darryl Biel's mind. The fraud was discovered after an internal investigation at the end of the same year. Get the news that matters most delivered directly to your inbox. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering after she admitted to investigators that she embezzled hundreds of thousands of. Kreuper, who had taken a vow of poverty as a nun, worked as a principal at St. James Catholic School in Torrance for 28 years and allegedly embezzled the funds for 10 years until her retirement in 2018. 5 Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, of Los Angeles, was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering Credit: KCAL 9 5 In December of that year, fraud allegations emerged against her and another nun, Sister Lana Chang, who had taught at the school. Kreuper was 18 years old when she took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, her lawyers told the Post. Sister Mary is not full of grace. (Shutterstock) LOS ANGELES, CA The retired principal of a Catholic . She then used some of the funds to pay for "large gambling expenses incurred at casinos and certain credit card charges.. We do know they had a pattern of going to casinos, and the reality is, they used the account as their personal account, an attorney told parents and alumni at Mondays meeting. Kreuper is due in court on 1 July and faces up to 40 years in federal prison. But as the archdiocese was completing its audit, it noticed something was off with the funding. If these teachers are exempt, he adds, then millions of employees are automatically exempt from laws enacted by Congress to protect workers, simply because they perform some duty their employer considers religious. As headteacher at St James Catholic School, which she ran for 28 years, she "controlled accounts at a credit union, including a savings account for the school and one established to pay the living expenses of the nuns employed by the school", prosecutors said. As soon as she was confronted, she accepted full responsibility for what she had done and she has cooperated completely with law enforcement and the archdiocese, the statement said, adding that she has been suffering from a mental illness that clouded her judgment. During the time period this was happening, she had no idea this was happening. Also implicated in the scheme was Lana Chang, who worked as a teacher at St. James before becoming vice principal. (RELATED: Nuns Allegedly Stole Catholic School Funds For Years: Report). The second suit was brought by Kristen Biel against St. James School in Torrance. St.James Catholic School caught embezzling $500K for personal use, including gambling as church declines to press charges. 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. When Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper became a nun, she took vows to live as Jesus did through chastity, obedience and service to the poor, sick and uneducated. Instead of sitting in the Supreme Court chamber, though, Biel, like the rest of us, will be at home listening. She was also entrusted with overseeing the St. James Covenant Account, a savings account that funded the living expenses of the nuns who worked at the school, the indictment against her states. I have sinned, Ive broken the law and I have no excuses, Kreuper said at the sentencing over Zoom. A now-retired nun has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $800,000 from the St. James Catholic School in Torrance, California, from 2008 to 2018, the last decade of her 28-year tenure as principal of the institution. "These teachers taught the Catholic faith to these kids more than the parish priest," putting them squarely within the so-called ministerial exception, he says. Claiming mental illness at her age is a play for probation or the ability to serve her sentence at home. ", "Just as teaching science out of a fifth-grade textbook doesn't make them scientists, teaching religion for 40 minutes a day out of a workbook doesn't make them ministers," he says. US District Court Judge Otis Wright acknowledged his own anguish in deciding a punishment to fit the crime, saying "I haven't slept well in God knows how long" as he rejected prosecutors' call for a two-year sentence. Image Via Scott Varley/Digital First Media/ Torrance Daily Breeze via Getty Images. This large chunk of stolen money came as the St. James Catholic School was operating under tight budgets with small concerns that the finances could not continue to keep the door open. At least I hope you do.. One parent told the outlet of the situation: "It's crazy. An old unused bank account was the giveaway. "You don't want the government deciding who teaches religion we don't do that in this country that's why we have an establishment clause," says Rassbach. By that math, Sister Mary Margaret was only 66 when the behavior began. Starting in 2008, Kreuper diverted school funds to pay for expenses that the order would not have approved, much less paid for, prosecutors say. American sister stole money from accounts she controlled as a headteacher and used it to pay off credit card charges and "large gambling expenses incurred at casinos". A Los Angeles nun jailed for stealing more than $800,000 to fund a gambling habit has admitted "I have sinned". Investigators described a system in which Kreuper handled all checks made out to the school for tuition and fees before handing them over to bookkeeping staff for processing. "She's 80. "https:" : "http:") + '//www.zergnet.com/zerg.js?id=47402'; Mary Margaret Kreuper was so close to getting away with it. Kreuper took fellow nuns on some of those trips and spent thousands of the primary school's money. When this was going on, she was not nearly as old. They dont want you to see this Big Tech does its best to limit what news you see. Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, who was principal of St. James Catholic School in Torrance, California, used the school funds to . Because the funds were to be restored, the archdiocese decided not to press criminal charges. German cardinal offers to resign over sexual abuse catastrophe, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. A retired nun has admitted to embezzling $835,000 over 10 years from a Catholic school in California to fund her gambling habit, according to federal prosecutors. There is another, and rather rich, twist to one of the cases before the court Monday. Apparently, the Vegas trips were common knowledge, but the nuns explained that the gambling excursions were gifts from a rich uncle. "I have sinned," Sister Mary told a US . All rights reserved. (deployads = window.deployads || []).push({}); (function() { Kreuper was in charge of the schools credit union account, where she was meant to deposit cash and checks from tuition, fees and donations. Cyclist falls to her death after drawbridge opens while shes on it, Trump tells Joe Rogan to stop apologizing for Spotify controversies, Frozen out of GoFundMe, Canadian protest convoy raises millions on Christian sit. The school soon had a change of heart following pushback. Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering on Tuesday and has agreed to a plea deal, according to a release from the U.S. attorneys office for the Central District of California. This article was published more than1 year ago. })(); Adriana Kuch attackers identified on social media in planned attack, St Louis execution shooting of homeless man: arrest made, Karen calls cops on black men shovelling snow for free outsider her home, Idaho murder suspect had multiple photos of female victim on phone, Torrance Catholic school nuns steal $500K for gambling habit- church resists charges. Kreuper falsified monthly and annual reports to cover up her crime and asked school employees to alter and destroy financial records during an audit. She was the principal and had been colluding with longtime teacher Sister Lana Chang on the operation, per the Daily Breeze. I promised her I would see this through," he says. The nuns order says the woman are cooperating and intend to pay all of the money back in full. Southern California authorities have revealed two nuns allegedly embezzling up to $500K which was parlayed into gambling jaunts in Las Vegas. The archdiocese of Los Angeles said in statement that the community of faith at St James was shocked and saddened by these actions and expressed gratitude to local and federal law enforcement agencies for their work in the investigation of this matter. Maybe if she had used her poker face to see more success in Vegas, she wouldnt have been in this position to begin with. BroBible is the #1 place on the internet for the very best content from the worlds of sports, culture, gear, high tech, and more. James School.. When Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper was 18 years old, she vowed to dedicate her life to the education of children and helping those in need. Her husband, Darryl Biel, remembers that day vividly. The principal allegedly withheld some of the checks and deposited them into the other account, endorsing the back with a stamp that read, St. Kreuper as the schools principal, handled all tuition payments, with the sister depositing checks into a separate account that she and Chang had access to. Kreuper originally pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering back in 2021. Asking for the nun to be spared from prison, her lawyer Mark Byrne told the court she has been kept under "severe restrictions" at a convent by the nuns in her order. But Fisher notes that the schools in these cases do not claim any religious reason for firing the teachers. An elderly nun who pleaded guilty to embezzling from a Catholic school to fund her own gambling trips has been sentenced to a year in federal prison. Its an explanation.. Ultimately, he argues, the schools consider the teachers to be performing an important religious function, and therefore, they can be fired for any reason because they are not subject to the nation's fair employment laws. Sister Mary Margarets lawyers said that she is very remorseful, and has been suffering from a mental illness that clouded her judgement and caused her to do something that she otherwise would not have done.. The nun took frequent gambling trips to Las Vegas and holidays to Lake Tahoe and other locations in southern California, according to Poonam Kumar, the assistant US attorney. Mary Margaret Kreuper, 80, of Los Angeles, was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay $825,338 in restitution. For more information about our use of cookies, our collection, use, and disclosure of personal information generally, and any rights you may have to access, delete, or opt out of the sale of your personal information, please view our, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. It's just that you have to look and see what kind of function are they doing.". In the process, Kreuper falsified monthly and annual reports to the St. James administration to cover up her fraudulent conduct and lulled St. James School and the Administration into believing that the schools finances were being properly accounted for and its financial assets properly safeguarded, which, in turn, allowed defendant Kreuper to maintain her access and control of the schools finances and accounts and, thus, continue operating the fraudulent scheme, according to court documents. 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