httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQZVdP5iXq0
Former “Dance Moms” star Abby Lee Miller has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for bankruptcy fraud and for taking $120,000 worth of Australian currency into the country without reporting it.
A federal judge in Pittsburgh ordered Miller to pay a $40,000 fine and spend two years on probation following her release.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Melucci told the court that Miller went from being a “Dance mom in the bankruptcy case to dance con.”
Critics of “Dance Moms” accuse Miller of being emotionally abusive toward the girls, and many episodes show her students dissolving into tears after a harsh critique.
Miller announced in March that she was leaving the show.
Prosecutors said Miller repeatedly hid her true income and contracts for future income from her TV shows until her channel-surfing bankruptcy judge saw her on TV and concluded she must be making far more than the $8,899 in monthly income she initially declared.
Miller eventually coughed up $288,000 in TV income she didn’t initially report, but then federal investigators found she’d hidden nearly $550,000 more from personal appearances, dance sessions and merchandise sales.
Miller filed for bankruptcy after defaulting on a $245,000 Florida condominium mortgage and a $96,000 mortgage on her dance studio in Penn Hills, a Pittsburgh suburb, her bankruptcy lawyer said.