A Woman Allegedly Stole Over $1M Worth Of Chicken Wings & It's Enough To Fill A Swimming Pool
What can someone do with 11,000 cases of chicken wings?
Chicken wings in a cardboard delivery box.
An Illinois woman is being accused of stealing over $1.5M in food — mostly chicken wings — and making a local school district pay for it.
Vera Liddell, a 66-year-old Dolton resident, was working as the Director of Food Services at Harvey School District 152 when massive food orders started being placed, according to court documents obtained by FOX7.
Per the outlet, it all started during the COVID-19 pandemic, between July 2020 and February 2022, when Liddell presumably placed these hundreds of unauthorized shipments, including a total of 11,000 cases of chicken wings.
The official documents from the Criminal Division of Cook County, Illinois, state that the orders were placed through the school district’s main food supplier, Gordon Food Service, and were separate from the legitimate district’s purchases.
Allegedly believing these shipments were authorized, the supplier billed the school district for everything, including the massive amount of wings presumably ordered by Liddell.
The woman’s alleged acts are being considered an embezzlement scheme, and the subject of accusations supposedly took place while schools were closed due to state order and meals were being provided to the students via pickup, per the same source.
However, in January 2022, a routine mid-year audit showed that the food services area of the district was more than $300,000 over its annual budget, leading to an investigation that found individual invoices for chicken wings purchases allegedly done by Liddell.
According to CBS, surveillance video shows the woman showing up at the Gordon Food Service installations to pick up food orders and leaving in a school district vehicle. Nonetheless, that food was apparently never taken to the school.
What can someone do with that amount of chicken wings? Maybe fill up a swimming pool? That’s still unknown, but official documents state that the school district does not even serve wings because they contain bones.
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.