Two nuns stole $500,000 for trips to Las Vegas, but the church doesn't want them prosecuted
An old check allegedly exposed decades of lies.
For nearly 28 years, Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper was the principal at St. James Catholic School, an elementary school in Torrance, California, a coastal suburb southwest of Los Angeles. Around the same time when Kreuper announced she was retiring earlier this year, a family at the school asked for a copy of an old check they had written to St. James. When staff members found the check, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported, they realized it had not been deposited in St. James’s account but a different bank account.
That was among the first clues that would unravel a vast fraud that was allegedly conducted by Kreuper and Sister Lana Chang, another nun and longtime St. James’s teacher. School officials recently told parents the two nuns stole around $500,000 from the school. The school said that the two women, reportedly best friends, used the pilfered funds on trips and casino visits.
“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,” Marge Graf, an attorney representing St. James, told a group of parents at a meeting last Monday night, according to the Beach Reporter.
The revelations came as a shock to parents and church members, who were not only operating under the impression that St. James was struggling to afloat in fiscally troubled waters, but also dealing with the aftershocks of tragedy. In 2014, four people were killed - including a 6-year-old boy - when an intoxicated woman plowed into a crowd of people leaving a Christmas concert at St. James, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Read more: http://www.providencejournal.com/news/20181210/two-nuns-stole-500000-for-trips-to-las-vegas-but-church-doesnt-want-them-prosecuted
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