Plan B Forum

From CNN:

Retired nun who embezzled from school to pay for her gambling habit, sentenced to prison, feds say

She stole $835,000 (From a school! Think of the children!!) and she gets a year and a day in federal prison. Not sure why this was a federal case and not California. I see that the charges were wire fraud and money laundering - could she still face state charges for, you know, stealing shit?

There are plenty of people locked up for a lot longer for stealing a lot less. Is it as simple as her being an elderly white woman who did not use a knife or a gun to get her $$$$$?

All I can think of is that it was a bunch of thieves (the government, buttressed by the legal minds Trump put into place on the various judicial benches during his tenure) standing in judgement of one of their own.  They undoubtedly admired her for sheer chutzpah — I mean we're talking about a nun at a casino, for Pete's sake! — as well as the amount she embezzled so, just like the sharks that would not attack a lawyer, a certain amount of professional courtesy may have come into play.

-"BB"-

Sentences of incarceration are notoriously light for embezzlement, this is true in the federal system and in many states as well.

I had a few such cases in my years as a prosecutor and victims were always angry at the light terms of imprisonment- but our courts sentenced based on pre-sentence reports which are in part a picture of the defendant’s history and in part a picture of typical sentencing terms in similar cases.

All I can say is that in my experience embezzlers typically have no prior criminal history and are otherwise people of ‘good’ character. That doesn’t diminish the betrayal felt by the victims - I’ve had cases where it was a family business robbed long term by a trusted long term employee treated like family, and cases where the victim was a nonprofit serving at risk kids or other important causes.

Most embezzlers engage in some weird mental gymnastics and very often don’t even realize how much they’ve stolen over time - forensic accounting bears it all out and I’ve seen defendants genuinely shocked and horrified by the extent of the theft they’ve accomplished over time, as they’ve usually been entrusted with all the accounting and haven’t been audited by a third party (and anyway the typical audit isn’t designed to uncover fraudulent bookkeeping). This is a very dangerous situation to have in place in any business or organization.

Usually the courts don’t impose long sentences of incarceration because they want the defendant working and paying restitution. They ALWAYS impose a condition of supervision that any employer must be informed of the circumstances of the crime and usually that defendants be barred from any position involving financial management for a third party for the duration of suspended sentence or probation.