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Crime

Nuns steal $500,000 from school for gambling in Vegas

Louisa Wright with AFP
December 11, 2018

Two nuns stole money from St. James Catholic School in California to fund gambling trips to Las Vegas. The school does not want to press charges, but the Archdiocese of Los Angeles said it will be a "complaining party."

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Two Catholic school nuns in California admitted to embezzling about $500,000 (€439,700) and using the funds for travel and gambling in Las Vegas, their order said Monday.

Sisters Mary Margaret Kreuper and Lana Chang took money from tuition, fees and donations at St. James Catholic School in Torrance, south of Los Angeles.

Read more: German priest gambles away thousands in parish funds

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles said the missing funds were discovered during a routine audit and it is believed the nuns stole the money from the school over at least a decade.

"We do know that they had a pattern of going on trips. 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 for the school told parents and alumni at a recent meeting, Californian daily newspaper The Press-Telegram reported.

Kreuper was principal at the school for 29 years until she retired earlier this year. Chang was a teacher for 20 years and also retired this year.

Archdiocese to become complaining party

The school's pastor, Monsignor Michael Meyers, said the school did not want to pursue criminal proceedings against the sisters and that no other school staff were involved in the scheme, adding that police had been alerted to the situation.

While the archdiocese initially said it would not press charges in the case, an archdiocesan spokesman told French news agency AFP on Monday that the archdiocese would become a "complaining party" in the case.

Read more: Why are casinos controversial in Japan?

The nuns allegedly got away with their crime by depositing some checks made out to the school for tuition and other fees into a different bank account than the one used by the school.

In a statement to AFP, the Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the nuns' order, said: "The Sisters of St. Joseph both desire and intend to make complete restitution to St. James School."

Meyers told parents in a letter dated November 28 that the nuns were cooperating with an investigation to determine the full amount of misappropriated funds.