Woman gets 9 years in prison for stealing $1.5 MILLION in food, chicken wings from school district

A woman from Cook County, Ill. received a nine-year sentence for stealing $1.5 million of food, largely chicken wings. The wings were stolen from a suburban school district. Vera Liddell, 68, received the news last Friday. She had been the director of food services for Harvey School District 152, Fox reports.

She was first charged with felony theft, continuing a financial crime enterprise and forgery in January 2023. Cook County, the suburban bedroom of Chicago, is often linked with violent crime, especially gang shootings. Police officers have also been targeted. But there was more graft than guns in Liddell’s’ case.

Between July 2020 and February 2022, prosecutors said Liddell padded her food orders with hundreds of unauthorized requisitions, including 11,000 cases of chicken wings, that she ordered through the school district’s food supplier, Gordon Food Service. She did not place the fraudulent orders at the same time as the legitimate ones, according to prosecutors.

"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," prosecutors declared when charges were first laid.

Gordon Food Services billed the school district for all the charges while the prosecution said Liddell used an official school district cargo vehicles to transport the stolen goods. "The food was never brought to the school or provided to the students," prosecutors said.

The jig was up for Liddell when the school district conducted a routine audit of expenses in January 2022 and discovered that its budget was $300,000 in the red midway through the school year.

"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 proffer said.

Employees of Gordon Food Service said they all knew who Liddell was because of “the massive amount of chicken wings she would purchase," and she was caught on surveillance video at the food storage compound arriving early to pick up the wings.