Member-only story
NFL Star Chris Jones Offers To Buy $1.5 Million Of Chicken Wings To Set Convicted Lunch Lady Free
A bizarre recent news story just got even stranger
This past week, 68 former school cafeteria employee Vera Liddell was sentenced to nine years in prison for masterminding a scheme for diverting $1.5 million worth of chicken wings to private businesses so she could pocket the profits. The already bizarre story just took another strange turn with the news that NFL star Chris Jones has offered to pay for all of the pilfered wings in the hopes that doing so would set the lunch lady free.
Liddell worked as the food service director for the Harvey School District in Chicago for more than a decade. Part of her job was ordering food from suppliers for each week’s menu. Starting in 2020, it was alleged that she began placing huge orders for chicken wings. The scheme was discovered after an audit revealed significant discrepancies in the books — specifically a massive shortfall of chicken wings. She was ordering so much that the school district was over budget on its food by $300,000 when it was uncovered, even though the school year was only half over at the time.
Investigators found that Liddell had ordered 11,000 cases of wings over the course of18 months under the guise that they were being used as…
