Her lawyer, Molly Sullivan, emphasized that Cooper had undergone mental health counseling for her gambling addiction since her arrest.<\/p>\n
“An addiction to gambling doesn’t justify her behavior here, but I think it explains what happened,”<\/strong> Sullivan said, as reported by the Gazette. “Her access to funds and her thought process that — ‘I’ll just hit it big at the casino and pay that money back’ — that didn’t happen here, obviously.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nPublic defender Sullivan asked for a lenient sentence of one day in prison followed by five years of supervised release, considering Cooper\u2019s mental health problems, previous good standing, and sense of remorse.<\/p>\n
But chief prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Will Crow, said that would be a “miscarriage of justice\u201d for a defendant who had been facing up to 30 years in prison before her plea deal.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. agreed.<\/p>\n
“You can’t steal over $300,000 and not expect some prison sentence,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bank teller who stole $300k from the Premier Bank of Arkansas (PBA) was told her gambling addiction and mental health problems only partially excused her actions. She was sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. Grandmother Pamela Cooper, 63, of Marion, Ark., pleaded guilty last week to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":287570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[87786,87785,87787,84163],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Addiction \u2018Doesn\u2019t Justify\u2019 $300K Theft by Arkansas Grandma<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n