Schools which cater to the needs of the poor give society a ray of hope for a better future.
Therefore, people come forward to give their hard-earned money to these institutions as donations.
Then again, what just happened in a Catholic School in California might make you revisit your trust on the good-heartedness and objectives of people working with this institution.
Recently, the two nuns from the St. James School in Redondo Beach of California have been discovered to have run a scam of USD 500,000 on the money collected by the school as donations.
The guilty, Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Chang of the same school were accused of this theft after the termination of 28-year tenure served by the former as the principal of the school.
Both of them managed to window-dress the accounts of the school and as the investigation revealed, they spent a part of it to take gambling trips to Las Vegas.
Both of them are Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and it was known to the school that they had a habit of taking trips to casinos and gambling. What can to them as an unpleasant surprise is the fact that they used the school funds as their personal account to fund these excursions.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles conducted an internal investigation as they have resorted to solve the matter internally and not launch a legal complaint against the elderly nuns.
The audit as a part of the internal investigations revealed this figure after going through the accounts of the past 6 years of the school. These accounts still don’t talk about the cash transactions.
According to the church’s monsignor, the investigation was launched immediately after the accounts went under a standard check after Kreuper’s retirement after 28 years. The financial investigations made her extremely nervous and she was repeatedly trying to not let that happen but after the auditors sensed that ‘something was off’ with the records, the two nuns could no longer escape what they had called upon themselves.
The responsibility to reimburse the school has been taken up by the order which will later impose appropriate penalties on the nuns.
One major reason why this remained hidden for more than 10 years is the fact that the parish and the school was always run in black, i.e., the money government had no clue existed.
Well, it is not just the two nuns but other staff members too who could be involved in the scam but that will be revealed as the investigation follows its course of action.
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