PITTSBURGH _ "Dance Moms" TV star Abigale Miller, convicted of hiding assets from bankruptcy court and sneaking cash into the U.S. to conceal it, says she shouldn't go to federal prison.
She's asking U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti for probation.
But the government says she's shown no respect for the law _ at one point she sent an email to her accountant using a crude slang term in referring to the bankruptcy judge _ and deserves the two years to 30 months called for by sentencing guidelines.
Miller's sentencing will start Friday. A second day has been set aside to finish it on Feb. 24.
In June she became a federal felon when she pleaded guilty to concealing assets from her TV show from U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Pittsburgh. She also admitted that she sneaked cash into the country in plastic bags stuffed into luggage after returning from dance trips in Australia.
In pre-sentencing filings, Miller said her family-run Penn Hills dance studio was in financial trouble in the late 2000s because of her lack of financial knowledge and a drop in enrollment caused by the global economic crisis and the economic decline of Penn Hills.
She declared bankruptcy in 2010.
But when the reality TV show took off in 2011, she and her lawyer said, she became a star and didn't know how to handle the success that it brought. She soon became overwhelmed.
"She was simply ill-equipped to manage her good fortune," wrote attorney Brandon Verdream.
He said she always intended to pay off her creditors at 100 percent and has admitted that what she did was wrong.
"It was a foolish decision to skirt the law and she has accepted a felony conviction as the wages of her frivolity," Verdream wrote.
He and Miller, who splits her time between California, Florida and Penn Hills, also pointed to all of the people she has helped over the years as one reason for her to avoid prison, including the roughly 40 dancers she has trained who went on to professional careers on Broadway and elsewhere.
Verdream presented many letters on her behalf and asked Judge Conti to impose a "non-custodial" sentence.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Melucci said, however, that Miller had numerous opportunities during her bankruptcy to set the record straight about her assets yet chose to lie repeatedly. Among his exhibits are emails and texts she sent showing her intent to hide income. After being dressed down by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Agresti in February 2013, for example, she sent an email to her accountant describing the judge using a derogatory term and saying he hated her because he was making her pay all of her creditors back at once.
Judge Agresti showed plenty of irritation at Miller as her schemes became apparent, Melucci said. At one hearing in 2012, he found out she hadn't revealed her income from 2012 and had also struck TV show contracts without disclosing them in her amended bankruptcy plan. After she complained that she didn't even know about the contracts, he'd had enough.
"And she can shake her head and protest all she wants and go through her TV face, that's not going to affect me, ma'am, and I'd prefer you stop it, okay," he told her. "Let's be a little stoic here. These are very serious problems you have, and a failure to disclose."
Melucci also said her attempt to transport cash into the U.S. shows that she continued "her scheming ways" even after being caught hiding assets from bankruptcy.
"It is apparent that Miller is not easily deterred by the threat of criminal prosecution," he wrote, "even standing before a federal judge."
Judge Agresti discovered Miller's fraud when he was channel-surfing one night, came across her TV performances and realized she had more money than she was revealing in her Chapter 11 filings.
The U.S. attorney's office said she tried to hide about $755,000 from the bankruptcy trustee.
In the other case, prosecutors said she did not report money that she transferred from Australia into the U.S. after 2014 trips there to conduct dance instruction classes before large audiences. Melucci said she and her entourage brought back about $120,000 in cash tucked into Ziploc bags in amounts less than $10,000 and hidden in their luggage. Among the government's exhibits is a photo of bundles of cash seized.
