Extortion

  • Posted: December 2nd, 2011 - 3:28pm by Doug Powell

    On March 22, 2005, Anna Ayala claimed she found a finger in a bowl of chili at a San Jose Wendy’s restaurant. The finger became the talk of the Internet and late-night talk shows, spawned numerous bizarre tips and theories about the source of the finger, and led to dozens of copycat claims. Wendy’s lost tens of millions of dollars.

    Turns out the finger belonged to a co-worker of Ayala’s husband who severed it during a construction accident and was planted in the chili in a misguided attempt to extort money from Wendy’s.

    In Jan. 2006, Ayala, 40, was sentenced to nine years; the hubby got more than 12 years.

    Two days ago, police in York, Pennsylvania, charged Shelby Lyn Adams, 40 (righ, exactly as shown), of York, with killing her 90-year-old grandmother, Ada Adams, by poisoning her Wendy's chili with morphine three years ago in York Township.

    The investigation lasted about three years -- set back by the lengthy gathering of scientific evidence and a change in investigators because of a promotion in 2010, said Chief Thomas Gross with York Area Regional Police.

    "The detectives did a thorough job at the scene, which was difficult
    considering the death of a 90-year-old woman with no real evidence of a disturbance," Gross said Thursday afternoon.

    Police also had to wait on autopsy and forensic results from vomit on Ada Adams' blouse, which showed the plant substances found in Wendy's chili, according to court documents.

    Gross said that suspicious family members were "very persistent in getting justice for their mother."

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  • Posted: January 27th, 2010 - 5:05pm by Doug Powell

    Running a restaurant is hard enough without dealing with rats and wackos.

    The Post-Crescent reports that a woman who attempted to extort money from an upscale restaurant by putting a rat in her lunch entered no-contest pleas Tuesday to two criminal charges.

    Judge Dee Dyer found Debbie R. Miller, 43, guilty after she entered the no-contest pleas to a felony extortion charge and a misdemeanor for obstructing police. She will be sentenced March 8 in Outagamie County Court.

    Miller planted a rat in her lunch at The Seasons on April 17, 2008, and then demanded $500,000 from the owners. She threatened to alert the media if the money wasn’t paid.

    Bob Doller, who owns The Seasons in Grand Chute with his wife, Jessica, said,

    “This has been a long, drawn out battle and it has affected my business. We would hope that if anyone had any doubts that it was a true claim, they would know now that it was extortion. In April, it will be two years since this happened. If you compare 2007 to 2008 (the year of the incident), the loss was tens of thousands of dollars.”

    The Dollers kept the rat after the extortion attempt. Insurance investigators sent it for testing and determined that it not only wasn’t a wild rat, but rather a domestic, white rat that had been cooked in a microwave. The restaurant doesn’t use microwaves.

     

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