Dance Moms' Abby Lee Miller Breaks Her Silence After Prison Sentencing: How She's Coping

"I wasn't ever trying to hurt anyone," she says on Good Morning America

By Zach Johnson May 10, 2017 12:05 PMTags

Reality is sinking in for Dance Moms' Abby Lee Miller.

On Tuesday, Lee Miller was sentenced to 366 days in federal prison and ordered to pay a $40,00 fine and $120,000 money judgment after being charged with bankruptcy fraud and bringing unreported $120,000 foreign currency into United States. "A year and a day," the 50-year-old reality star said on Good Morning America Wednesday. "It sounds like a movie title."

When she leaves prison, Lee Miller said she hopes to "be a smarter businesswoman and also to worry about myself." As she fought back tears, she looked back on her career. "I have spent so much time and so much energy making other people's children stars. I didn't have any children of my own," Lee Miller said. "These were my kids and I raised them like they were my kids."

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Dance Moms Stars React to Abby Lee Miller's Prison Sentence

Lee Miller will likely spend 10 months in prison in West Virginia or California, where she currently lives. She initially filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and she was indicted with fraud charges five years later. It was alleged that she'd hidden $750,000 from bankruptcy creditors, and she pleaded guilty in 2016. "I don't want to hear that number anymore!" she said Wednesday, again claiming her actions were unintentional. "I wasn't ever trying to hurt anyone."

In hindsight, she said, "I would never have filed for bankruptcy ever. I do not recommend it."

The Lifetime star must surrender herself in the next 44 days. Once she's behind bars, Lee Miller said, I'm just going to pretend we're shooting a movie and we're on set and I'm there for 10 months, and that's the way it's going to be." She is also planning to "read more" and learn Spanish, and she is "already working on a new book."

After Linsey Davis finished her interview with Lee Miller, Soo C. Song, United States attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, issued a statement regarding the matter. "This defendant secreted and structured profits that she derived outside the United States from performances by children," Song said, adding that her actions "undermine our justice system."