Man Gets 50 Years In Prison For Stealing $1.2 Million Worth Of Fajitas

Not that stealing over a million dollars worth of fajitas isn't a heinous and hard-to-imagine crime, but we're a little flummoxed by what seems to be a relatively harsh sentence. Texas' The Brownsville Herald reports that 53-year-old fajita fan and former juvenile detention center employee Gilberto Escamilla was arrested after "a driver from Labatt Food Service in Harlingen called the detention center's kitchen to let employees know their 800-pound delivery of fajitas arrived. Minor inmates at the Darrel B. Hester Juvenile Detention Center are not served fajitas."

Apparently, Escamilla would order fajitas for the kids at the center, then take them and, presumably, sell them to someone else. Cold. So perhaps the fact that he was a public servant accounts for the harshness of his punishment. He testified about his fajita stealing, "It started small and got bigger and out of control. It got to the point where I couldn't control it anymore." The Herald notes that "Cameron County Assistant District Attorney Peter Gilman said in all of his years prosecuting theft cases he has never handled one like this, which amounted to around $1,251,578." Still, the Preppy Killer only got 15 years for manslaughter, for example; 50 years still seems like a lot, even for that many fajitas.