With each new school year, fresh checks for tuition and fees streamed into the principal’s office at St. James Catholic School in Torrance, Calif.
But for 10 years, those checks, along with donations, scarcely made it to the school’s bank account.
Instead, the school’s principal, Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, 79, was stealing the money and using it to bankroll her gambling habit, federal prosecutors said, violating her vow of poverty.