FBI Announces Nun’s Gambling Habit – Vow of Poverty, Confessed to Embezzlement
Photo: Mary Margaret Kreuper
TORRANCE – The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has announced the confession forthcoming from a Catholic Nun who ran a Torrance Catholic School. Guilty to federal charges will be the plea – due to over $835K embezzled to fund her gambling habit.
The holy vow of poverty didn’t reveal itself to save her from her path to the judge in the federal courtroom. The now-retired nun, formerly the principal of a Catholic elementary school – will stand before judgment for stealing school funds.
Fraud and money-laundering charges await her on judgment day – for money diverted for personal expenses and gambling trips. “Mary Margaret Kreuper (79), of Los Angeles, was charged June 8th with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering,” said the FBI. “In conjunction with the criminal information, prosecutors filed a plea agreement in which Kreuper agreed to plead guilty to the two charges that carry a maximum statutory penalty of 40 years in federal prison.”
Over 10 years’ time, as principal for 28 years, Krueper embezzled incoming tuition, fees, and charitable donations from St. James Catholic School. She used two credit union accounts to divert funds toward, as she confessed, “to pay for expenses that the order would not have approved, much less paid for, including large gambling expenses incurred at casinos and certain credit card charges.”
Some of those funds would have been paying the living expenses of the school’s employed nuns. As she falsified reports, she was allegedly directing the employees, during a school audit, to alter and destroy financial records – ultimately causing St. James to lose $835,339.
Her arraignment is on the first of July. FBI Los Angeles announced that Assistant United States Attorney Poonam G. Kumar of the Major Frauds Section is prosecuting the case.
The ongoing investigation is being conducted by Torrance Police Department, the FBI, and IRS Criminal
Investigation.
