A school worker and finger lickin’ fraud has been jailed for nine years after stealing a whopping £1.17million worth of chicken wings.
Vera Liddell, 68, who was the food service boss at Harvey School District 152 in an impoverished suburban area of Illinois, US, started her fowl play at the peak of the Covid pandemic in July 2020.
The kids were all learning from home, and she kept on pilfering poultry right through to February 2022. The scam was only discovered when a business manager at her Chicago school did a routine audit and spotted that grub costs were a massive £235,000 over what they should have been.
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Court docs revealed that Liddell ordered more than 11,000 cases of wings from suppliers, paid with school dosh and then swiped them in a school van.
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Liddell, who worked at the school for years, owned up in January 2023 after being charged with theft and running a criminal racket charges. The prosecutors said the manager “discovered individual invoices signed by Liddell for massive quantities of chicken wings, an item that was never served to students because they contain bones,” reports the Mirror.
WGN TV obtained court documents that revealed: “The massive fraud began at the height of Covid during a time when students were not allowed to be physically present in school.
“Even though the children were learning remotely, the school district continued to provide meals for the students that their families could pick up.”
(Image: Cook County Sheriff’s Office)
It was reported that employees of the district’s food supplier, Gordon Food Service, were quite familiar with the accused “due to the massive amount of chicken wings she would purchase”.
The district, comprising five schools, has records showing a total enrolment of 1,600 kids, with over 80% of the students classified as “low income”.
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