Life has been a tumultuous journey for Abby Lee Miller in the past year and change, and in a way that has nothing to do with her winning competitions with her well-known dancing school. Well, not exactly. The former ringleader of Dance Moms faced a sentencing trial today for counts of bankruptcy fraud and more, and while she was previously hopeful that the judge would look at her case as not being serious enough to warrant jail time, that wasn't how things played out. Miller is now facing just over a year behind bars.
By the time court had let out in Pittsburgh earlier today, Chief Judge Joy Flowers Conti had dropped a swift hand of justice down on Abby Lee Miller in the aftermath of her pleading guilty to 20 counts of fraud, in which she failed to report earnings in the $750,000 range, among other morally empty financial blunders. Miller was sentenced to one year and one day behind bars, and following her release, she'll be under supervised probation for an additional two years. She'll also have to pay a $40,000 fine, along with taking care of another $120,000 problem.
The judge was apparently pretty plain-faced about the reasoning behind sentencing Miller to jail. Here's what she said, according to Deadline.
You weren't truthful, even when you knew you were supposed to tell everything, you still weren't truthful. Somehow you got caught up in the world of fame and you lost your moral compass.
Everyone knows that celebrities, from Hollywood's elite to television's C-list, often have advantage in life that other non-recognized citizens do, and the legal system definitely plays into that. Her year-long sentence was shorter than the 2+ year sentence the U.S. Attorney's office wanted her to get. I don't know that Abby Lee Miller spending time in jail -- which will reportedly be around nine months or so, and not the full year -- will do anything to convince people that the justice system is cracking down on privilege, but I certainly didn't expect her to get an actual prison sentence. Though the trial was in Pittsburgh, Miller will likely head to a penitentiary somewhere in the Los Angeles area.
This case has been going on for a while now, starting up two years ago with the initial discovery and then ramping up last year as the trial was set. Miller's legal issues didn't really put too much of a damper on any seasons of Dance Moms, and her current future won't affect it at all concerning any upcoming seasons, considering she exited the show earlier this year, to be replaced by Dancing with the Stars vet Cheryl Burke.
At this point, Abby Lee Miller's future is more set in stone than Dance Moms's, since Lifetime has yet to say whether or not a new season is coming. In the meantime, head to our summer TV schedule to see what definitely is on the way in the coming months, and then to our cancellation/renewal rundowns for both network shows and the cable and streaming series.
