An Australian Instagram model and Catwoman cosplayer is heading back to prison for trying to play a cat burglar in real life, after she was convicted in a series of bizarre masked crimes last year.
Monique Agostino, 25, was resentenced to a year in prison this month after she was caught breaking into a pizza joint in a mask in 2018. The masked burglar was not wearing her cat ears at the time, but authorities still managed to identify her through CCTV footage.
The pizza break-in was one of several that Agostino committed alongside some teenage boys on Nov. 6, 2018, in a string of minor crimes for which she was convicted last year. Agostino and her crew also tried — and failed — to break into a cafe and a convenience store that night, Australia’s News Corp reports. They later broke into another cafe and made off with $300 and a credit card, which they used to buy about $12 worth of McDonald’s.
Agostino was also part of a break-in at a bakery a few weeks later, during which $1,000 in cash was stolen, News Corp reports.
The 25-year-old is a real estate agent and aspiring model who had built a large online following through her Instagram page, where she would often post photos of herself in Catwoman costumes and other outfits. The account has since been taken down.
She was also convicted on separate charges of possessing a knife at a Target, possessing a prohibiting drug (meth), possessing a restricted substance, and stealing a $90 Supre jacket from a shopping mall.
Agostino has already served time behind bars but she was released pending an appeal over the summer. She was arrested on a warrant in July for breaching her bail conditions, then arrested on another warrant in early September for skipping her appeal court date.
Police didn’t need any help from Batman to put this Catwoman behind bars, as her lawyer acknowledged at her resentencing hearing this month.
Attorney Pawel Kulisiewicz described her crimes as “amateur hour” antics, and said she and her accomplices “were always going to get caught.”
Agostino captured headlines in Australia last year with a tearful in-court outburst. She told Magistrate Jacqueline Milledge that she was suffering from “anxiety and depression” in custody and that if she killed herself it would be Milledge’s fault, according to the Daily Examiner.
The magistrate told her to take some responsibility for her actions.
“It seems everyone else is responsible for your bad luck,” Milledge said at the time, according to reports.
“Your life is going down the toilet because you are choosing your own lifestyle. I am not going to sit here and have you blame everyone else for your non-attendance and your noncompliance.”
A judge reduced Agostino’s sentence this month and gave her credit for time already served.
The decision means Agostino will be due for release sometime in October — just in time for Halloween.
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