Ex-South Texas Juvenile Justice Department employee Gilberto Escamilla probably left the Cameron County District Attorney’s office wondering “Where’s the beef?” after being arrested for alleging stealing $1.2 million worth of fajitas over the past nine years.
That’s right. Fajitas.
The Brownsville Herald reported that the only reason Escamilla got caught was because he missed work for a medical appointment, leading him to also miss picking up his 800-pound fajita delivery from the Labatt Food Service in Harlingen, the Juvenile Justice Department’s meat vendor.
On August 7, a Labatt Food Service driver called the front desk seeking to unload the order of fajitas, but the woman who answered the phone responded that the kitchen didn’t serve them. The driver then informed her that he had been delivering fajitas to the department for the last nine years.
Unsurprisingly, Escamilla was fired the following day and arrested on August 9 after the DA’s Office Special Investigations Unit obtained a search warrant and found packets of fajitas in his freezer.
The subsequent investigation into the invoices, purchase orders, and county audit records found that Escamilla had stolen a whopping $1,251,578 worth of fajitas.
District Attorney Luis V. Saenz found that Escamilla would deliver the huge orders to his own customers as part of some intricate fajita side-hustle.
Saenz also stated that Escamilla’s fajita-job exposed a gross accountability failure on behalf of the Cameron County Juvenile Justice Department itself, saying, “Up and down the chain of authority, people were signing off on these things. It’s upsetting because the auditor gets a detailed invoice where it states the breakdown of what’s delivered, so they should’ve seen it.”
Escamilla was arrested last Tuesday and his actions have prompted the Department to closely review their company policy.
If late night hosts need a break from bashing our president (and Lord knows they do) this fajita debacle could present a rather...um... hot opportunity.