Wendy’s Chili Scheme Watch: Couple Sentenced to Prison
A hot bowl is chili is shown Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006 at the same Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose, Calif., where Anna Ayala and her husband, Jaime Plascencia, cooked up a scheme last March to plant a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili to extort money from the fast food chain. Both were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Wednesday.
New York Times: Couple Sentenced to Prison for Wendy’s Chili Scheme
A state court judge sentenced a Las Vegas couple who admitted to planting a severed human finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili to lengthy prison terms Wednesday.
The couple, Anna Ayala and Jaime Placencia, pleaded guilty in September to planting the finger as part of an extortion scheme. Their story received heavy news coverage and briefly threatened a public relations nightmare for the fast food chain.
Ms. Ayala and Mr. Placencia apologized Wednesday in state court in San Jose. Mr. Placencia was sentenced to 12 years and 4 months, said his lawyer, Charles Kramer, and Ms. Ayala was sentenced to 9 years.
The judge, Edward J. Davila, also ordered the couple to pay about $21 million in restitution to Wendy’s.
The finger:
Police in San Jose, Calif., were investigating the possibility that Sandy Allman’s fingertip, above, which a leopard bit off in February, matched the finger that a Las Vegas woman says she found last month in her bowl of Wendy’s chili, below.
The criminals:
Anna Ayala
Anna Ayala, left, and her husband, Jaime Plascencia, right, exchange words after they were sentenced in a Santa Clara County Superior Court in a San Jose, Calif., courtroom, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006. Ayala and Plascencia, who cooked up a scheme last March to plant a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili to extort money from the fast food chain were sentenced to Wednesday. Ayala, 40, was sentenced to nine years and Plascencia was sentenced to more than 12 years. In center is an unidentified interpreter.
At the hearing Wednesday, The Associated Press reported, several Wendy’s employees testified, including the man who made the chili.
“I felt so bad for the fear of what people would think of me,” The A.P. quoted the chili maker, Hector Pineda, as saying. “We are the ones that have suffered.”
Now, it is time for these two MORONS to pay their debt back to society…….
David Boyd, the prosecutor on the case, said it was ironic that the publicity Ms. Ayala had courted to cover her claim resulted in a stiffer penalty because the it increased harm to Wendy’s business.
“She went on ‘Good Morning America’ with her attorney to say how horrible it was,” Mr. Boyd said. Her statement “actually had substantial impact on Wendy’s sales.” The authorities suspected a hoax early on. A test by the Santa Clara County coroner’s office concluded that the finger “was not consistent with an object that had been cooked in chili at 170 degrees for three hours,” as is the Wendy’s policy.
And police officers also were never able to verify contentions by Ms. Ayala and two relatives that she vomited after spitting out the detached finger. The officers found no vomit at the scene, the affidavit said.
Case closed.
Previous:
Guilty Pleas in Wendy’s Finger in Chili Case
What Wendy’s Learned in Finger Flap
Police Say They Know Source of Finger Found in Chili
Woman in Wendy’s finger case eager to face charges
Line at San Jose Wendy’s is Now Out the Door
San Jose Wendy’s Fans Not Knuckling Under to Finger Fiasco
Police Finger Woman and Say Wendy’s Finger a HOAX
Wendy’s Finger Finder Pinched
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