Photo: LauriPatterson (Getty Images)
Last October we told you a story about a man named Gilberto Escamilla, a former South Texas juvenile justice department employee, who was arrested after stealing $1.2 million worth of fajitas over a nine year period. That’s right, $1.2 million. Well fast-forward a couple of months and Escamilla has finally been sentenced. And let’s just say he didn’t get a slap on the wrist. Instead he got 50 years behind bars.
When sentenced on Friday, Escamilla was also served with the maximum fine of $10,000 on top of the $1,251,578.72 he was ordered to pay back for the cost of the fajitas, officials said.
According to The Brownsville Herald, Escamilla’s scheme unraveled last August after a delivery driver with Labatt Food Service phoned the detention center to give kitchen employees a heads up that an 800-pound delivery of fajitas had arrived.
Employees immediately thought the delivery to be suspicious as minors at the detention center are not served fajitas, however the delivery driver insisted that had been delivering fajitas to the detention center’s kitchen for the past nine years. After being fired and arrested, Escamilla’s house was searched by police, who found packages of the fajitas in his refrigerator.
“It was selfish. It started small and got bigger and out of control,” Escamilla said during court testimony. “It got to the point where I couldn’t control it anymore.”
Texas man sentenced to 50 years for stealing $1.2 million worth of fajitas
Gilberto Escamilla, 53 – was employed at the Darrel B. Hester Juvenile Detention Center in San Benito, Texas, until August 2017.https://t.co/bUAIM9xPEl via @nbcnews
— CTA513 (@CTA513) April 23, 2018
Hell, I can’t control myself either when it comes to fajitas, so I completely get it. What I don’t get is that some people get a handful of years behind bars for beating someone close to death, while this schlub gets 50 years for a bunch of fajitas. But hey, that’s America.
