Dance Moms maven and Maddie Ziegler’s teacher Abby Lee Miller is scheduled to plead guilty next week to bankruptcy fraud and failure to report more than $10,000 of Australian currency that she brought into the country, the AP reports. It all started when a channel-surfing bankruptcy judge saw Miller on television and suspected that she must have been making more than the $8,899 she was claiming as her monthly income. A federal investigation determined that, indeed, Miller made a lot more money. The FBI and other agencies found that Miller tried to hide $775,000 of income from appearances on Dance Moms and the spinoff Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition, as well as money from personal appearances, dance sessions, and merchandise.
Miller has been delaying her response, receiving five extensions since her initial indictment last October. Facing the possibility of five years in prison and over $5 million in fines, Miller is now “accepting responsibility.†She released the following statement through her lawyer:
Events over the past several months have been extremely challenging for me, my family, my friends and most important, my students. Because of this I made the very difficult decision to close the door on this chapter of my life by accepting responsibility for mistakes I have made along the way.
Miller’s publicist, Sheryl Main, then clarified that by “this chapter,†Miller was referring to the criminal charges, not her reality-television career.