A 73 year old US nun, Sr Barbara Markey, has been sentenced to three years jail for embezzling up to $800,000 from the Archdiocese of Omaha. Douglas County District Judge Thomas Otepka sentenced Sr Markey to three to five years in prison after she pleaded guilty to felony theft by deception of more than $1,500, the Omaha World-Herald reports.
Although archdiocese officials had accepted $125,000 in restitution, they had accused Markey of embezzling as much as $800,000.
Not sending Markey to prison, Otepka said, would have depreciated the seriousness of the crime and promoted disrespect of the law.
Otepka rejected Markey's attorney's request to suspend the sentence until Monday until she could get her affairs in order.
Deputies escorted her to the Douglas County Correctional Center immediately after the sentencing on Friday morning.
She will be assigned to a state correctional facility and must serve at least 18 months before being eligible for parole.
In issuing the sentence, the judge also rejected an argument from her attorney, J. William Gallup, that the crime was a momentary flaw, caused by a gambling compulsion, in an otherwise exemplary life.
Otepka said he considered her many achievements and good works but added that it wasn't like a one time theft of money left lying on a desk in her office.
Instead, he said, she committed multiple thefts over a long period of time.
Gallup said Markey was shocked and disappointed by what he called a terrible decision.
"I respect the judicial system, but I think it has failed here," Gallup said.
In court, Gallup said the Internal Revenue Service, suspicious of unreported income by embezzlement, had recently audited her records and did not find anything approaching the archdiocese's original numbers.
The former director of the Catholic Family Life Office in Omaha, Sr Markey had entered the guilty plea in March after initially fighting the charges.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce