Woman Sentenced to 42 Months Prison for Stealing $1.5 Million to Feed Gambling Addiction

06:57
29 Sep

A woman has been sentenced to 42 months in prison for embezzling funds from a Washington D.C. ballet school to feed her gambling habit. The 60-year-old was also ordered to repay $3 million in fines or face spending even longer behind bars.

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Guilty

Sophia Kim was the treasurer of the non-profit Universal Ballet Foundation, and stole the cash using both cheques and cards almost 250 times in MGM National Harbor casino.

Incredibly, she was given her position after completing three years of supervised release after being jailed for financial crimes in the past. We assume she didn’t declare her past convictions.

In 2012 she was sent to prison for filing false tax returns and tax evasion at another non-profit organisation and served two years before being released on parole. It is unclear if there are any accusations of her stealing money for gambling on this occasion.

In 2018, Kim was fired from her role due to “performance issues” and inexplicably told a former coworker what she had done. Her lawyer, David W. Bos, explained to the presiding judge that she had an untreated gambling addiction and had attended group theory for more than two years in the hope of curing her problem.

Bos even told the court that Kim used to replace stolen money back into the foundation’s bank accounts when she had a good run.