A man from Texas is accused of stealing $1.2 million worth of fajitas over a period of nine years. Investigators linked the accused to the felony after discovering that he was ordering a huge number of fajitas at his workplace, but the organization did not serve the food item to employees. According to the Brownsville Herald, Gilberto Escaramilla, an ex-employee at the Cameron County Juvenile Justice Department, got caught in his nine-year-long act when he missed work one day due to a medical appointment.
Juvenile Department worker arrested
In August, the day Escaramilla was out of the office, a delivery driver contacted the kitchen of Cameron County Juvenile Justice Department to inform them of a drop off of 800 pounds of fajitas.
Interestingly, the woman who answered the call informed the driver that the juvenile department did not have the food item on its menu as the kitchen did not serve Tex-Mex food to its employees. However, the delivery guy reported that he was delivering the product for the last nine years to the Juvenile Department kitchen. While the bizarre incident sounds like a joke, over the last nine years fajitas worth $1.2 billion were delivered to the accused, per Luis V. Saenz the District attorney.
The bizarre scam
The call to the Juvenile Department kitchen was made by a driver employed by the Labatt Food Service in Harlingen. On getting informed that it was delivering fajitas to the department kitchen for over nine years, the woman who received the call was alarmed and quickly decided to inform her supervisor.
The very next day, Escaramilla was fired and subsequently arrested.
The orders that the accused placed over the last nine years were sufficient to place a charge of state jail felony theft of between $2,500 and $30,000. On August 9, 2017, a day after he was fired from his job, the District Attorney’s Office of Special Investigations Unit obtained a search warrant for Escaramilla’s home.
On searching, officials found packets of fajitas stuffed into his refrigerator. The police arrested him the same day. Saenz further revealed that Escaramilla would line up customers to sell the fajitas before he placed the order for the food items. Once he received the fajitas from the Labatt Food Service he would deliver the item to his consumers the same day. Till now, the police have been able to zone in on two of Escaramilla’s customers who are cooperating with the authorities for the investigation.
