Margaret Oyler did not graduate from the University of Baltimore School of Law, but she did nab $33,000 from the school’s Student Bar Association while serving as treasurer. So she admitted, and this after being found out by a new member and trying to kill herself to cover the shame. She finally admitted that she made the steal before a Baltimore judge this Thursday, gaining a five-year suspended prison sentence and three years probation. She also had to pay off the money, which required her borrowing money from her family. What led to her theft?
Drugs and alcohol.
She says her theft came during “an extremely dark period of my life,” in which she used the organization’s credit card to finance her painkiller habits. Between October 2010 and March 2012 she made most of her purchases, also financing shopping trips.
During an investigation of the goings on in court, Julius Blattner, the association’s then president, said Oyler gave false financial statements to cover her tracks. But the credit card kept accurate enough records to ferret out her nefarious activity.
“It wasn’t just like one day I woke up and decided, ‘Let’s do this,’” said Oyler, as reported by The Baltimore Sun. “I can’t describe in words where your head goes … Everything that I’m trying to do is trying to right his wrong and correct this mistake.”
When Blattner found out, he was surprised. “It was strange. I didn’t understand it, but I don’t think she had any explanation for it either.”
Though Oyler confessed the thefts to Blattner, she later didn’t recall it saying, “I don’t remember…because I was so drunk.”
It was after this incident that she attempted suicide only to awake at John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
She later confessed before the Baltimore judge who presided over her case.
It was the student body, not the university or the public, that has ultimately been robbed in this case.