Photo: bhofack2 (Getty)
They say everything is bigger in Texas. Evidently that sentiment includes those who want to steal Mexican food.
Gilberto Escamilla, a former South Texas juvenile justice department employee out of Brownsville, TX, was recently arrested after allegedly stealing $1.2 million worth of fajitas over a nine year period.
The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office slapped the cuffs on Escamilla after his co-workers discovered he was ordering an obscene amount of fajitas for the county juvenile justice department. The problem? The county doesn’t serve fajitas.
It was soon discovered that Escamilla would order the fajitas, only to deliver them to his own clients instead. It was a side-hustle nearly a decade old that finally back-fired simply because he missed a day of work for a doctor’s appointment.
On Aug. 7, Gilberto Escamilla took a day off to go to a medical appointment. A driver from Labatt Food Service in Harlingen — the Juvenile Justice Department’s meat vendor — called the kitchen to inform it of an 800-pound delivery of fajitas.
The woman who answered the phone said the driver was mistaken, and that the kitchen did not serve fajitas. That was when the driver told her he had been delivering fajitas to the Juvenile Justice Department for the past nine years, Saenz said.
“The receiver of the call rushes off to the supervisor and conveys to her the discussion that had been had, and that breaks the case,” Saenz said. “When Mr. Escamilla reports to work the next day, he is confronted with the discussion and he admits he had been stealing fajitas for nine years.”
Escamilla was canned the next day and arrested the day after that. Officers even found fajitas in his refrigerator, because why not eat a life-time of free Tex-Mex?
Escamilla’s felony crimes have reportedly also led to a review of department policy.
Um, duh?
The big question here is, how was Escarmalilla able to order 800 pounds of fajitas on the county’s dime every month and no one not notice?! That would be like bringing your own truck of liquor to the club, selling them at the bar for $800, and then going home without the any bar manager or bartender seeing a thing.
I’m no genius. But the county is soon going to have more beef in-house.
“If it wasn’t so serious, you’d think it was a Saturday Night Live skit. But this is the real thing,” District Attorney Luis V. Saenz said.
This camel has no shame either: Here’s A Camel Stealing A Woman’s Lunch At A Texas Safari Park
Josh Helmuth is the editor of Crave Sports and a contributor for Mandatory.
