Vera Liddell made headlines recently after being sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing a staggering $1.5 million worth of chicken wings. This bizarre crime left many questioning her motive, but it has been revealed by her lawyer that her actions were driven by a crippling gambling addiction.
Liddell’s story is a cautionary tale of how addiction can lead individuals to resort to extreme measures to fuel their habits. In her case, her gambling addiction drove her to orchestrate a complex scheme to steal chicken wings worth millions of dollars from a local district.
“She’s just a little sweetheart that’s got a gambling problem,” her attorney, Patrick O’Byrne, recently told PEOPLE. “She feels beyond terrible about this. This is totally uncharacteristic of her. It was the disease taking over.”
On Aug. 9, the 68-year-old woman pleaded guilty to one count of felony theft of more than $1 million and was sentenced to nine years in prison, according to the Cook County’s Sixth Municipal District Circuit Court clerk’s office.
Lidell was working as a cafeteria consultant for an Illinois school district at the time of the theft, which occurred between July 2020 and February 2022, according to her other lawyer, Gregory LaPapa. The lawyer says the chicken wings were intended for underprivileged children receiving free lunches during the pandemic shutdown.
According to O’Byrne, Liddell made false orders of chicken wings, which she then resold, and then gambled away the proceeds. Records obtained by PEOPLE show that she struggled financially, filing for bankruptcy at least twice in Chicago courts in 2009 and 2016.
“She feels incredibly distraught, terrible about what she did,” O’Byrne told The New York Times. “She can’t even believe she did it.”
Vera Liddell’s story serves as a sobering reminder of the dangers of addiction and the lengths to which it can drive individuals. Her drastic actions to fund her gambling habit resulted in a significant loss, both personally and professionally and that’s a lesson to us all out there.
