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Bank Embezzler Pays Steep Prices After Lying Her Way To A 1 Day Sentencing

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A former South Philadelphia bank branch manager who talked and lied her way to a one day sentence in a half million dollar embezzlement case is now paying a steep price for her lies.

Thirty-one-year-old Katherine Harrell has now been sentenced to almost six years in prison for lying at the earlier sentencing. It was quite a tale of woe.

"She begged for leniency saying her parents were dead, that her brother was basically on hospice care, confined to a hospital bed in her home and that she had to feed him, change him, bathe him, and that if she were sentenced to jail he would go off to a nursing home where he would languish, and that her son would be forced into foster care," says prosecutor Karen Grigsby.

A compelling story, but they were all lies.

And authorities say there were more lies after that.

The judge says he doesn't think the defendant gets it and the message to her is committing crimes has consequences.

Lies helped set her free but authorities found out and now the convicted bank embezzler will pay a steep price.

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