A school employee stole over £1 million worth of chicken wings.

It's quite a shocking case - Vera Liddell, a 68-year-old food service director at Harvey School District, has been sentenced to nearly a decade behind bars for her chicken wings scheme. It all started when a business manager decided to do an audit and noticed something was off with the food costs. As it turns out, Liddell had been ordering an excessive amount of chicken wings - over 11,000 cases in just one year - and picking them up in the district's cargo van. And the worst part? The chicken wings were meant for students to take home during the pandemic, but they never received them.

According to Cook County prosecutors, Liddell began her scheme in July 2020 and continued until February 2022. The food was supposed to be for students attending classes remotely during the coronavirus pandemic, but instead, Liddell was using it for her own gain. The district's budget was already strained due to the pandemic, and Liddell's actions only made things worse. When the business manager noticed that food costs were $300,000 over budget with months left in the school year, Liddell was finally busted.

It's not the first time that food meant for students has been stolen during the pandemic. In March 2020, burglars broke into Gosfield School in Essex, UK, and made off with frozen meals that were meant for the children of doctors and nurses. These children were still allowed to attend in-person classes so their parents could continue working on the front lines. The burglars even took four commercial-sized freezers and cleared out all the dry food in the kitchen, leaving the school unable to feed its students and staff.

In another unfortunate incident, a thief was caught on video stealing 1,000 cartons of milk from Kincraig Primary School in Blackpool, Lancashire, within just four months in 2019. These incidents highlight the desperation and greed of some individuals, especially during times of crisis.

As for Liddell, she had been heading up food service at the district for a decade before her scheme was discovered. She was charged with theft and operating a criminal enterprise in January of last year, and now, she will be spending the next nine years behind bars for her actions. Let this be a lesson to all - stealing from those in need, especially during a pandemic, will not go unpunished.

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