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Nun Sentenced to One Year in Prison for Stealing $835,000

As principal of a Catholic elementary school, Kreuper diverted $835,000 of school funds to pay for gambling jaunts in Las Vegas and luxury trips to resorts like Lake Tahoe. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
As principal of a Catholic elementary school, Kreuper diverted $835,000 of school funds to pay for gambling jaunts in Las Vegas and luxury trips to resorts like Lake Tahoe. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
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Nun Sentenced to One Year in Prison for Stealing $835,000

As principal of a Catholic elementary school, Kreuper diverted $835,000 of school funds to pay for gambling jaunts in Las Vegas and luxury trips to resorts like Lake Tahoe. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
As principal of a Catholic elementary school, Kreuper diverted $835,000 of school funds to pay for gambling jaunts in Las Vegas and luxury trips to resorts like Lake Tahoe. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

A California nun will serve a year in prison for stealing $835,000 from an elementary school to support her gambling habit and touristic trips, AFP reported.

Although Nun Mary Margaret Kreuper, 80, had vowed to live a low-key life 60 years ago, she had stolen tuition checks and school funds to support her secret sins for years.

“I have sinned, I have broken the law, and I have no excuses,” Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper, the former principal of St. James Catholic School, told the judge, according to The Los Angeles Times.

She called her crimes “a violation of my vows, the commandments, the law, and above all the sacred trust that so many had placed in me.”

Kreuper belongs to the US congregation of Catholic Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ) established in France, in 1650.

When an audit threatened to expose the scheme, the nun tried to mask her crime by asking employees to destroy incriminating documents. However, she eventually admitted embezzlement last year.

According to The Los Angeles Times, when she was initially confronted by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, she argued that priests were better paid than nuns and that she thought she deserved a raise.

Her lawyer Mark Byrne asked to allow Kreuper to serve her time at the convent, where she had been kept since her crimes were uncovered in 2018.

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Varieties

Tokyo Police Care for Lost Umbrellas, Keys, Flying Squirrels

This photo taken on August 2, 2024 shows thousands of umbrellas in containers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
This photo taken on August 2, 2024 shows thousands of umbrellas in containers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
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Tokyo Police Care for Lost Umbrellas, Keys, Flying Squirrels

This photo taken on August 2, 2024 shows thousands of umbrellas in containers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
This photo taken on August 2, 2024 shows thousands of umbrellas in containers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)

Lost your umbrella, keys, or perhaps a flying squirrel? In Tokyo, the police are almost certainly taking meticulous care of it.

In Japan, lost items are rarely disconnected from their owners for long, even in a mega city like Tokyo -- population 14 million.

"Foreign visitors are often surprised to get their things back," said Hiroshi Fujii, a 67-year-old tour guide at Tokyo's vast police lost-and-found center.

"But in Japan, there's always an expectation that we will."

It's a "national trait" to report items found in public places in Japan, he told AFP. "We pass down this custom of reporting things we picked up, from parents to children."

Around 80 staff at the police center in Tokyo's central Iidabashi district ensure items are well organized using a database system, its director Harumi Shoji told AFP.

Everything is tagged and sorted to hasten a return to its rightful owner.

ID cards and driving licenses are most frequently lost, Shoji said.

- Flying squirrels, iguanas -

But dogs, cats and even flying squirrels and iguanas have been dropped off at police stations, where officers look after them "with great sensitivity" -- consulting books, online articles and vets for advice.

More than four million items were handed in to Tokyo Metropolitan Police last year, with about 70 percent of valuables such as wallets, phones and important documents successfully reunited with their owners.

"Even if it's just a key, we enter details such as the mascot keychain it's attached to," Shoji said in a room filled with belongings, including a large Cookie Monster stuffed toy.

Over the course of one afternoon, dozens of people came to collect or search for their lost property at the center, which receives items left with train station staff or at small local police stations across Tokyo if they are not claimed within two weeks.

If no one turns up at the police facility within three months, the unwanted item is sold or discarded.

The number of lost items handled by the center is increasing as Japan welcomes a record influx of tourists post-pandemic, and as gadgets become smaller, Shoji said.

Wireless earphones and hand-held fans are an increasingly frequent sight at the lost-and-found center, which has been operating since the 1950s.

But a whopping 200 square meters is dedicated to lost umbrellas -- 300,000 of which were brought in last year, with only 3,700 of them returned, Shoji said.

"We have a designated floor for umbrellas... during the rainy season, there are so many umbrellas that the umbrella trolley is overflowing and we have to store them in two tiers."