Abstract. Let be a prime and λ, j ≥ 0 be an integer. Suppose that f (z) = n a(n)q n is a weakly holomorphic modular form of weight λ + 1 2and that a(0) ≡ 0 (mod ). We prove that if the coefficients of f (z) are not "welldistributed" modulo j , thenThis implies that, under the additional restriction a(0) ≡ 0 (mod ), the following conjecture of Balog, Darmon and Ono is true: if the coefficients of a modular form of weight λ+ 1 2 are almost (but not all) divisible by , then either λ ≡ 0 (mod). We also prove that if λ ≡ 0 and 1 (mod −1 2 ), then there does not exist an integer β, 0 ≤ β < , such that a( n + β) ≡ 0 (mod ) for every nonnegative integer n. As an application, we study congruences for the values of the overpartition function.