Well, at least it’s not Employee Retention Credits or PPP fraud.
Courtesy Chicago’s WGN, the food service director for Harvey School District 152 in the southern burbs pleaded guilty last Friday to stealing $1.5 million of food — mostly chicken wings — under the cover of providing meals to students learning remotely at the height of COVID. She’s been sentenced to 9 years behind bars where she probably won’t see nary a wing.
Early last year, Cook County prosecutors accused Vera Liddell of placing unauthorized orders with the district supplier Gordon Food Services from July 2020 to February 2022. During this time, students were learning from home but could still pick up take-home meals provided by the district. Ms. Liddell would have gotten away with it too were it not for the meddling school district business manager who audited the departments in January 2022 and found food service had gone over its annual budget by $300,000. In addition, the bone-in chicken wings stood out as odd because students aren’t usually served food with bones. Shoulda stuck with nuggets, lady.
Gordon Food Services employees told investigators they were familiar with Liddell “because of the massive quantities of chicken wings she would purchase,” reported WMAQ last year.
Although we don’t know for sure which of the many chicken wings Gordon Food Services offers were involved in this heist, simple math tells us that 11,000 cases of the above pictured wings equals $1,231,890. We may have cracked the case (no pun).
The question on everyone’s mind (after “is it a slow news day at Going Concern?”) has to be “So what happened to all those chicken wings?” FOX 5 DC has your back:
Suburban School Worker Stole 11K Cases of Chicken Wings in $1.5M Embezzlement Scheme: Court Docs [NBC 5 Chicago]