Khang Le charged with stealing $150,000.
By Raif Karerat
A Buddhist monk from Louisiana was arrested at LaGuardia Airport in New York and charged with ransacking his own temple and making out with about $150,000 in order to fund his gambling habit, the New York Post reported.
Khang Le, the top-ranking monk at the Vietnamese Buddhist Association of Lafayette, La., showed up to a Brooklyn Federal court in in full religious garb on Monday and will likely be extradited to his home state.
“Le stated he started to gamble in 2011 or 2012 and would spend between $5,000 and $10,000 every two or three days at the casino playing blackjack,†​court papers reveal of an interview with Le conducted by a federal agent in 2014. “Le admitted to having a gambling problem and admitted that he was utilizing Temple funds to gamble.â€
Investigators said that Le’s a blackjack infatuation began in 2011 when he started making secret visits to the L’Auberge Casino in Lake Charles. He resorted to stealing from the temple’s accounts when his meager $1,000-per-month salary stopped being able to finance his appetite for gambling.
Le told agents during interviews last year that he always went to the casino alone and sought out quiet corners in order to obscure his shameful conduct, according to court papers.
“Sometimes, when Le won, Le stated that he would return some of the funds back into the Temple’s bank account,†court papers state.
Between December 2012 and the present, records showed that he withdrew $374,789 from both personal and temple accounts from ATMs at his preferred casino.
Agents learned that Le was going to pass through New York on his way to Canada to buy a used car on Saturday, a source told The Post. They confronted him and placed him under arrest at 2:26 p.m. without any resistance.