Convicted Embezzler's Courtroom Lie Could Get Her More Jail Time
By Tony Hanson
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A former South Philadelphia bank manager was sentenced to a day in prison for a half million dollar embezzlement scheme, but her performance at sentencing earlier this year could net her real jail time. She has now pleaded guilty to a new charge of corruptly influencing the due administration of justice by lying.
Katherine Harrell, 31, had pleaded for mercy -- not for herself, she said, but for her son who would be placed in foster care, and her brother -- her poor brother suffering after an accident.
In court yesterday, prosecutor Karen Grigsby recounted Harrell's compelling story. "I wouldn't allow him to be put up in a nursing home. I set up -- he is set up in a hospital bed in my living room. I have to feed him, change him and bathe him."
And Harrell told the court she had no parents, but the story started collapsing the next day. "This defendant's brother called the judge's chambers to ask what the sentence was."
That was a red flag and when the FBI called he said he had never been in an accident, there was no feeding, no changing, no bathing by Katherine Harrell, who it turns out, was living with the parents she said she didn't have.
