California

'Dance Moms' Star Abby Lee Miller Set for Early Prison Release

Abby Lee Miller was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for hiding $775,500 worth of income and bringing $120,000 in Australian currency to the U.S. without reporting it.

Former "Dance Moms" reality TV star Abby Lee Miller is set to be released from prison early.

WTAE-TV reports Miller was originally scheduled for release June 21, but online records now list her release date as May 25. Miller has been in a California prison since turning herself in this past July.

Miller was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for hiding $775,500 worth of income and bringing $120,000 in Australian currency to the U.S. without reporting it. By law, all travelers carrying in excess of $10,000 must declare it at Customs.

In a May 2017 interview on the "Wendy Williams Show," Miller alleged that she personally was carrying less than $10,000 and the money she was accused of smuggling into the U.S. was not hers or on her persons.

The 51-year-old had filed for bankruptcy after defaulting on a Florida condominium mortgage and a mortgage on her Abby Lee Dance Company studio in Penn Hills, a Pittsburgh suburb. 

Miller told Williams that she regrets filing for bankruptcy but was compelled to do so when enrollment at the dance school dropped after the financial crisis of 2008.

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. She told Williams the bankruptcy was filed before she was ever on the show β€œDance Moms,” and didn’t understand why the two cases were conflated.

Her lawyer argued Miller had become "ill-equipped to deal with the brand she became."

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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