'I have sinned', admits nun who stole more than $800,000 to fund gambling habit

A Los Angeles nun jailed for stealing more than $800,000 to fund a gambling habit has admitted “I have sinned”.

Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 80, who took a vow of poverty, begged a judge to show her mercy and spare her prison, saying: “I have sinned, I’ve broken the law and I have no excuses.”

She called her crimes a “violation of my vows, my commandments, the law and, above all, the sacred trust that so many had placed in me”.

Credit cards and gambling debts

Kreuper admitted embezzling about $835,000 (£616,000) in donations, tuition and fee money between 2008 and 2018.

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.

The money she stole was used to pay off credit card charges and “large gambling expenses incurred at casinos”, the US attorney’s office said.

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Trips to Vegas

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.

Kreuper took fellow nuns on some of those trips and spent thousands of the primary school’s money.

Mr Kumar said that jealousy played a part, calling the episode “really an abuse of position of trust”.

When first confronted, Mr Kumar said, the nun claimed she “did it in part because she believes priests get paid better than nuns”.

Nowhere to go and unemployable

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.

“She doesn’t have anywhere to go,” he said. “She’s 80. She doesn’t have any money. She’s obviously not employable.”

Kreuper, he said, quoting an expert, was addicted to gambling, adding that it “is not an excuse for what she did… merely an explanation”.

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.

He said he could not bring himself to judge Kreuper solely on “the worst thing that she’s done in her life”, the LA Times said.

The judge settled on a prison sentence of one year and a day and also ordered Kreuper to pay back the money she had stolen from the school.

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