Vegas Loving Nuns Steal Half a Million from a Catholic School
Vegas Loving Nuns Steal Half a Million from a Catholic School
While this case has some serious implications, when you look at it from the outside, there is a bit of humor here, too. In fact, it almost sounds like the setup to some type of joke or a plot to a movie from the 90s. Just as the title says, two nuns have gotten into some legal trouble for their thefts, which helped them to fund their vacations to Sin City… which seems like a strange place for Catholic nuns to love.
What Really Happened?
A Redondo Beach Catholic Parish discovered that there was some money missing from one of the schools, and they launched an internal investigation. During the investigation, they found that two of the nuns who had worked at the St. James School had taken a large amount of money from the school over a number of years. They were using this money for their own personal use.
As the investigation continued, they found that the nuns, Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Change, took at least half a million dollars over the course of a decade. These two nuns enjoyed gambling and they liked to spend time in Las Vegas. Of course, being a nun doesn’t pay very well, and they needed to have a way to fund their trips. Skimming money must have seemed like a good and easy option, and they likely thought that no one would ever figure it out.
Naturally, when the missing money fiasco came to light, it raised some alarm bells with those who have children at the school. However, Monsignor Michael Meyers wrote a letter to parents to explain what was happening. He told them he knew that the money that was stolen did not do anything to affect the programs at the school or the quality of education their children were receiving there. He also said that no other staff members were implicated in the scandal.
What Happened with the Nuns?
With this much money missing, you would naturally assume that the police would get involved and the nuns would be arrested. However, as often happens with the Catholic Church, they declined to pursue any criminal charges against the nuns. Instead, they said that they would be handling the matter internally. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the order to which the nuns belong, said that they would take care of the missing money.
The nuns who stole the money say that they are very remorseful about what they have done and they asked for forgiveness. Both of the nuns are currently retired from the school now.
Nuns that Gamble and Steal Are Nothing New
If you thought that you heard this story years ago, you might have heard something very similar. Sister Marie Thornton took more than $850,000 from Iona College back in the early part of the 2000s. She used the money that she took as a means to fund her trips to Atlantic City. The authorities were not quite as forgiving in this case, and she was charged with a felony.