NEW YORK TIMES
A former food service director for an Illinois school district was sentenced to prison for stealing more than $1 million worth of chicken wings, that were billed to the district but never given to students, the authorities said.
The former employee, Vera Liddell, 68, pleaded guilty to felony theft on Friday for stealing more than 11,000 cases of chicken wings valued at $1.5 million, according to a January 2023 court document filed by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Judge Michele Pitman of the Circuit Court of Cook County’s Sixth Municipal District sentenced Ms. Liddell to nine years in prison in the Illinois Department of Corrections, according to a sentencing document.
“The massive fraud began at the height of COVID during a time when students were not allowed to be physically present in school,” the 2023 document prepared by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said. “Even though the children were learning remotely, the school district continued to provide meals for the students that their families could pick up.”
But stolen food was never provided to the students, the prosecutor’s office said.
The guilty plea was part of a deal reached with the prosecutor’s office, said Patrick O’Byrne, one of Ms. Liddell’s attorneys. Mr. O’Byrne said that Ms. Liddell expressed “a great deal of remorse” for her actions.
“She feels incredibly distraught, terrible about what she did,” he said. “She can’t even believe she did it.”
According to the 2023 court document, Ms. Liddell was hired as a consultant in July 2020 for the Harvey School District 152 in Harvey, Ill., south of Chicago, after serving as the district’s food service director. Ms. Liddell was helping to onboard the new food service director and was the sole person placing orders, the document said.
From July 2020 through February 2022, Ms. Liddell “engaged in a pervasive embezzlement scheme” by placing hundreds of unauthorized orders for food items, primarily chicken wings, with the school district’s main purveyor, Gordon Food Service, the Cook County State’sAttorney’s Office wrote.
The orders were separate from the district’s regular orders, and Gordon Food Service, thinking they were legitimate purchases, billed the district, which then paid the invoices, the document said.
During a midyear audit in January 2022, the district’s business manager discovered the food service department had already surpassed its annual budget by $300,000.
“Upon closer review, she discovered individual invoices signed by Liddell for massive quantities of chicken wings, an item that was never served to students because they contain bones,” the court document said.
Surveillance video showed that Ms. Liddell used the district’s cargo vans to pick up the cases of chicken wings from Gordon Food Service, but “the food was never brought to the school or provided to the students,” the document said. It also showed that Ms. Liddell signed for the items and billed them to the district.
In one order placed in early October 2021, Ms. Liddell received 132 cases of chicken wings valued at approximately $17,480.76, according to a criminal complaint filed in March 2023. It was unclear what happened to the chicken wings after Ms. Liddell picked them up.
Ms. Liddell was arrested and charged in January, 2023.
Dr. Reginald Lawrence, superintendent of the Harvey School District 152, declined to comment on Tuesday. Gordon Food Service did not respond to requests for comment.
In a post on social media on Monday, Chris Jones, the defensive tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs, offered to pay $1.5 million in an effort to gain Ms. Liddell’s freedom. Her attorneys had said that she could not pay restitution because she had a gambling problem.
“I’ll pay for the wings that she stole to get her free,” Mr. Jones wrote.
Mr. O’Byrne and Gregory LaPaPa, one of Ms. Liddell’s lawyers, said they had not heard from Mr. Jones, his agent or the Chiefs.
A representative for Mr. Jones had yet to comment, and representatives for the Chiefs did not respond to request for comment on Wednesday evening.
