Hey, everybody, happy Saturday morning or whenever this finds you. Chuck here introducing this week's Selects episode, and we're gonna replay the great Finger in the Wendy's Chili Caper episode from January tenth, twenty nineteen. There was a finger found in Wendy's chili, and this is that story, nuff said.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry And this is the Stuff you Should Know. Chili Caper Edition Corporate Investigations, Las Vegas, San Jose Chili.
Yeah, and that means we get to use our special investigator nicknames Seattle Clark, Portland Bryant and San Francisco Jerry Rowland.
That's not bad. I would have chosen Tawny Katayan for me.
Yeah.
That was a very ham fisted way to set up an inshow mention of our three shows next week.
Oh oh yeah, next, that's actually lost on me, Chuck Next.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
It's apparently lost on the Pacific Northwest because no one's coming.
Next Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday.
We will be in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco on January fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth at the More Theater, Revolution Hall, and the Castro for Sketch Fest. And you have a End of the World Live Friday night in San Francisco, and I have a Movie Crush Live on Saturday afternoon in San Francisco.
I also have a Brooklyn End of the World one two on the twenty fourth.
Just FYI, Hey, let's not get carried away here, Okay, all right, but those are the shows we have coming up everyone, so come on out. There's still great tickets left at all three of these venues and all five probably I don't.
I'm not sold out for Movie Crush. So and especially those End of the World of Movie.
Crush shows are your best chance to hang out and talk to us personally because they are more intimate venues.
Like I wear a neglige.
Well, Busy Phillips is there, so I'm gonna have on my dinner jacket.
Oh, very nice.
Trying to impress her with my tuxedo, right, she's not impressive.
Tuxedo and jeans is a it's a it's a look.
So get all the information at s ysk live dot com or for the sketch Fest shows. Just go to the s F sketch Fest site and come out and support us everyone and shake our hand, pat us on the back, or spit on our shoes.
Don't do that. Don't do that.
Spit between our shoes. Just make it close, you know.
Yeah, if you really hate us, spit between our shoes.
There you go. That's gonna end up on a T shirt. I have a feeling. All right, let's talk about chili fingers, all right, So back in two thousand and five. Actually, let's getting the way back machine. Go watch this thing go down.
Way Back machine just for this short distance.
Yeah, I mean, it's not like you can walk to two thousand and five.
This is actually kind of great, though, because when you're forty eight, almost to go back thirteen years, I want to go back and do it all over. So all of a sudden, I'm thirty five, which I thought was old. Yeah, but man, I'd love to be thirty five right now.
I'm pretty happy with forty two. I've got to say, I'm not quite I'm not quite happy with the kind of catcher's mitt that my face is turning into but everything else I'm pretty glad about.
Yeah, just wait, just wait, Okay, it happens. Oh no, you're staring down the barrel of fifty and you're going, geez, I only got like fifteen more good years left.
Good. That is so not true, don't you know? Fifties the new thirty five? Is it? Do you know what's funny is all the people in this Wendy's in San Jose. We just showed up at her looking at us, like, what are these guys talking about?
I know they're like, get your superbar order underway.
Yeah, they're like, why don't you guys just be quiet and listen to chumbawamba like everybody else's right now.
I don't think they had super bar in two thousand and five. That was more like the eighties and nineties. But still, what was it? Superbar?
Yeah you don't remember that. No, Wendy's in the eighties.
Oh yeah, the superbar, which was this weird combination of tacos and pasta and salad and baked potatoes and baked potatoes all just like whatever you want.
I forgot all about that, man, what a good idea.
Yeah, the superbar was a weird, weird thing, but I ate it.
So there is no superbar anymore, but there is if you look over there. It was a woman named Anna or Anna Ayala, and she is sitting with her in laws, her her mother in law or father in law, are brother in law, maybe a couple other people, and she is about to bite down into a bite of Wendy's Chili that she has just ordered at the San Jose Wendy's downtown San Jose Wendy's, I believe on March twenty second, two thousand and five.
Yeah, she's in her her late thirties. It's cold in San Jose.
M hmm.
She's from Las Vegas, so she's not used to this.
She's actually so she's from San Jose originally, but she's moved to Vegas a couple of years ago for well, sure.
She has lived in Las Vegas lately and has been warming in the sun there, right, and Uh is like, I don't like this cold. I'm gonna order some chili because Wendy's chili is so so good.
That's meaty and warm, as Ed puts it.
That's right, And so she sits down she's eating this thing, and then all of a sudden, look at her.
She's just she's she's upset, Josh.
She's gone berserk. Everybody at the tables got their hands up, like whoa, settle down, and she's like just pointed at her chili, her chili cup she's reached the bottom of and she's saying that there's a finger in her chili. Yeah, she just bit into a finger.
Yeah, she looks like she's about to puke. I didn't see her vomit. I didn't either, but in court later she would say she did, so maybe we can be key witnesses.
Right. She's going up to the counter demanding I think she just said to one of the cashiers, who did you kill to get this finger? Which is a weird thing to say.
Yeah, she's yelling at everyone else in the restaurant with chili, saying, don't eat that.
Yepre's fingers.
That's finger chili.
That's right, finger chili. No one wants chut chut cha. She's starting to try to start a chant, I believe.
And there's only one guy that's still eating and he said, yeah, I ordered the finger chili.
Right, They said, I think you got mine. So she's freaking out things are starting to go down. There's a hubbub in the restaurant. Everyone's got every She has everyone's attention. She's saying that she just found a finger in her chili. The people at the counter are incredulous. They're kind of poking at it a little bit. They're saying, I think it's a vegetable or whatever. It looks like a carrot to me, lady, right, a very pale carrot with a
fingernail on it. And it's the fingernail really that does the trick. After this point, it becomes clear to everyone in the Wendy's that there is a finger that this woman just found in her chili. There's a fingernail on it. It's about an inch and a half a finger from the tip to well about an inch and a half down, and she just bit down on it and she found it in her chili. So the Wendy's employees react swiftly. They dump out all the chili. They call the police.
The police come by and they say, well, this is a health department kind of thing, really, And the police leave, and the Wendy's employees call the owners of the franchise, JEM Management, and they say don't do anything of that finger. Put it in the freezer, and we'll be there in the morning. And at this point, Anna Alaya leaves or
Anna Ayala. This is going to be very difficult, because I want to say Alaya, she leaves, Her families are taking her family members taking pictures of the location, and a huge national story has just begun. By ten o'clock that night, this happened about seven. By ten o'clock on the local news, there's an unconfirmed report of a woman who found a finger in her chili at Wendy's.
And Dave Thomas gets indigestion immediately.
Well, he'd been dead a few years, so that'd be phenomenal.
I thought he was alive.
Then he died in two thousand and two.
Okay, well he's rolling over in his grave.
But by this time, you know, he'd really kind of made Wendy's like a really loved and respected, you know, restaurant, because everybody thought Dave Thomas was so great.
Well, yeah, and as are we out of the way back machine? Are we done? Play acting?
I was serious, but yes we are.
Well you were seriously play acting. You were Laurence Olivier.
Maybe I was delusional. I thought we were in that one.
Okay, So.
Almost immediately word starts to spread on the news. Obviously, and as you might well imagine, the Windy's restaurant chain, especially in the area in the Bay Area near San Jose, it really starts to take a business hit. As you would imagine, people are not like, oh, they found a finger in some Wendy's chili. That really reminds me how much I love Wendy's chili. Right, let's go out and get a hot cup, right, because they are sort of famous for their chili.
Oh yeah. I mean, like, if you want chili at a fast food restaurant, you're going to Wendy's because you're not going to find it anywhere else. They really planted their flag and the chili market.
Yeah, the old an W's had pretty good chili.
Oh yeah, but you wanted that on a dog.
Sure, And of course the Midwest still very famous for their skyline chili.
Mm hm, which is delicious?
Is that? I guess that'd be fast food?
Huh yeah, I think they actually have skyline chili restaurants.
Yeah, yeah, which is good. It's quite good, it is. But if you're going to go just about anywhere in the US, if you have a hankering for chili, you're gonna go to Wendy's. But like you said, sales started to plummet, and not just like chili sales, all wendy sales started to take it hit, especially in the Bay Area, like you said, especially in the Western United States. People were just kind of grossed out by this whole idea.
But like I said, the cops had shown up and decided it was a health inspector's or a health department's jam. They didn't really have anything to do with it. So the next morning, the owners of the franchise, the county health inspector, they showed up, I think they contacted Wendy's communications department, and the gears were starting to move. There was something that they had to deal with, and that
was basically threefold. It was really twofold as far as Wendy's was concerned at first, but the third one crept in pretty quickly. Whose finger was this? Sure, how did the finger get into the chili?
Yeah?
And then after that, who was this woman who found the finger in her chili? And so Wendy's really started to focus on the first two because one thing. This whole the way that this whole thing played out, the
cops were very hands off at first. They felt this was a health department issue, a public health issue, and not a police issue, and basically said, you need to go figure this out yourself Wendy's, And so Wendy's had to do a lot of extra legwork that they probably wouldn't have had to do had the cops decided immediately that it was a criminal issue. But in the cops defense,
it didn't appear immediately to be a criminal issue. It appeared to be like a woman found a finger in her chili at Wendy's and that's gross, So go figure it out Wendy's.
Yeah.
I also bet there was like one guy who literally ate went to that specific Wendy's to get chili the next day and was like, dude, that's the last place you're going to find a finger in your chilli now, right, Yeah, there's no way it would happen again.
What are the chances.
Yeah, like flying on an airline right after they have a crash.
He's like, you go to Burger King, you're gonna get a finger.
They're going to purposely give you a finger man, don't be naive.
All right, So did you introduce police Chief Rob Davis yet? Not yet? All right?
So this is the guy San Jose police chief that would ultimately lead this investigation.
Later on, though after Wendy's did a lot of the initial legwork for him.
Yes, he would lead the investigation. And he basically was like, I got to find out who this lady is because Wendy's they're operating on the downlow here and this is a sort of a and apparently this is this case is taught in classes now about like how to handle a crisis as a corporation.
Yeah, I've seen I've seen it criticized. I've also seen it held up as an example of what to do too well.
I mean, here's what Wendy's can and can't do. What they can do is quietly throw a lot of money at this investigation on their own and then publicly. What they can't do is start to go after this lady and be too sort of dismissive of this finger like there's no way, lady, this lady's nut, she's whatever, she's after money, Like, you can't do that as a public facing company. You have to be doing all your due diligence sort of quietly, and they really were, They really were.
So how about this, dude, Let's take a break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about the investigation that Wendy started. How about that? All right? All right, Chuck. So, like you said, Wendy's can't just be like that, lady's a liar. There's no way that's our finger. They had to basically operate in the background. They couldn't appear like they were obstructing the police investigation. They couldn't appear like they were smearing ana Ayala, especially because the early reports
were very sympathetic to this woman too. Everybody was very grossed out by this. Sure, but at the same time, they had to deal with this issue, and they had to get to the bottom of whose finger this was and where the finger came from.
Yeah, And so the obvious first place to start is the restaurant itself, the employees there. The very obvious first place to start is to see if anyone was missing a finger.
Sure, and that's what they did. They said, show us your hands.
Yeah, everyone looked at everyone's fingers. They were all there, and they went all right, so far, so good. They would eventually put everyone on staff through a polygraph test, which they all passed. They would obviously then they would go to the supply chain to see if this thing might have because you know, these things happened.
Rarely.
They do though, Well, I found five other cases of fingers in fast food.
That were legitimate. Oh yeah, oh wow, So it happens up to supply chain. You know, there can be an industrial accident that leaves a finger in a bag of lettuce, greens or something, and that might eventually find its way to a Wendy's superbar.
Oh my god.
You know it doesn't happen much, huh. I wouldn't be too freaked out.
I'm still freaked out.
We'll go over.
Those at the end. But they're going up the supply chain. They're really doing their due diligence. They can't find. They offer a reward at first of fifty grand, later one hundred grand.
Well, they set up, yeah, a hotline for tips.
But they're basically, as time is going on, becoming more and more confident that they did not have a finger in that chili by their own fault.
They traced the chill ingredients to seven different suppliers. And they got documentation from all seven suppliers that nobody at their companies had suffered any kind of finger injury at any any recent time. And also, like you said, going at the store, doing at any of the nearby stores had suffered any finger injury, let alone an amputation. And so Wendy's was like, this is this didn't come from us,
This didn't come from inside our store. And they also they kind of ran a simultaneous forensic investigation as well. They hired a woman named doctor Lynn Bates who's the CEO of a company called Altecha out of Manhattan, Kansas. And if you are looking for evidence or study of a body part that was found in food, you go to doctor Lynn S. Bates and Alteca because they are they engage in forensic food microscopy. That's what they do, is there. That's their bread and butter, is studying body
parts found food. And she'd been doing it since nineteen eighty six. So Wendy's went to her and said, here's a piece of this finger. Was this finger cooked in this chili? Whose finger is it? She's like, I can't tell you whose finger it is, but I can tell you that there is no indication that this finger was cooked for three hours in chili at one hundred and
seventy degrees. It just wasn't. So that was a that combined with the Wendy's no Wendy's employer or supplier's employers missing a finger, that told Wendy's everything they need to know that they were being defrauded.
Yeah, and you would think, just grab a fingerprint police force, and they weren't able to.
They weren't able to.
They said if they found a hand that they might could literally look and compare fingerprints, but they they didn't get a good enough print off it to do a legitimate database.
Search, right right, They just had to sit around and wait for that hand to show up.
Because that thing had been cooking in chili for three hours.
It had not cooked in chili for three hours at any rate. So Wendy's knew what was going on. Now they had to go to the cops and say, we're being defrauded. Not only did they have the search for the missing finger investigation internally, and they hired Lynn Bates to do forensic work on the finger itself, they also hired a detective to start looking around at Anna Ayala, and the detective turned up some very interesting stuff about her.
Yeah, he was like, wait a minute, this woman has filed at least thirteen civil lawsuits, some against major corporations, and they He probably could have stopped there, and Wendy's would have just been like Dave Thomas from the grave would have said, see there, she's no good.
That's a good Dave Thomas. So I think he would have said, like, she should still get the benefit of the doubt.
I don't know, man, when someone is this as a pattern of litigious behaviors like this.
Well maybe he finished with proved me wrong one.
There were a couple of notable ones that it's sort of frustratingly hard to find information. She claimed that she won a thirty thousand dollars settlement from El Polio Loco from medical bills from her daughter getting sick from Samonella. Al Pollo Loco has always been on record saying never happened. We did not give that lady a dime, right GM. She sued GM because the front wheel of her car came off and there was an accident, and that suit
was dismissed with prejudice. When she fired her lawyer was a no show in court.
Oh is that what that means? No?
No, no with prejudice means you can't bring it back. Oh okay, so you can't. She can't say, well, well I didn't show up and my lawyer was bad, so let's.
Do this again.
Okay, I gotcha, I get so.
Basically it was dead in the water. So she suit a former employer for her sexual harassment. I'm not even going to comment on that one because I have no idea that could very well have been legitimate.
That one struck me as possibly legitimate, but she dropped it right.
She lawyered up immediately with a chili finger, and everything made Chief Rob Davis very suspicious. And then this guy that lived with her family named Ken Bono or Bono?
Would you say Bono?
I've been saying Bono hasn't even occurred to me. It could be Bono. Ken Bono's related to Bono Ken Bono. Because the cops are starting to ask questions. At this point, they do official investigations, They search her house. She claims that they held a gun to her head, ransacked her home, and like abused her daughter. Yeah, quite a charge for
a finger chili house investigation. There's a picture of her and her daughter in the driveway talking to a reporter, and her daughter's got like her arm in a sling, like the kindest thing you just go by at at the drug store.
Yeah.
So this was a guy who lived Bono, lived with their family, and when he's being investigated by the cops, he said that this finger came from our aunt, our deceased aunt.
It's her finger, which is a weird thing to say, especially because Anna, I all said, all of my aunts are alive. I don't know what this guy's talking about, even though he lives in my house.
Yeah, what was he? Was he trying to get money?
I don't know what.
I can't figure out.
I couldn't find much on that guy. I don't know what the deal was. I also just saw references to a rumor that the media had been reporting on that it was her dead ant's finger. So I didn't see how it came from him or what he was trying to do with that. But that was a thing. But that was just kind of like a little side thread that I think also made the cops a little more suspicious too, Like that's just a weird thing to say, even joking.
Yeah, but they did actually get While it didn't lead to whose finger it was, that tip line did yield some stuff at first, right.
So yeah, So, like you said, Wendy set up a tip line, a hotline that you could call in, and what they were looking for, specifically ostensibly was whose finger it was. That's what they wanted information the owner of the finger. But they were taking any and all tips that people called in, and they started offering fifty grand, like you said, they later up to one hundred grand, and it started to yield some tips, like pretty much
off the bat. I think the San Jose Police and Wendy's is funneling this information to the cops as it comes in, like as good tips come in. But two very early on came in from what the San Jose Police said. There were two different people who supposedly did not know each other, who told very similar stories about how Anna Ayala had told them that she was fleecing Wendy's, that all of this was just a fraud for money
to extort money from Wendy's and a lost suit. So that that combined with all the evidence that Wendy's had gathered that the finger had not come from inside their store. All of the on a Iowa's background, All of that put together really turned the tide not just on a police investigation, but also on the media against Anna Iola. And she had started this, she had created a huge
media circus around this issue. Like she went on Good Morning America and I could not find I think Good Morning America just took the video.
Down, probably just burned it because she just.
Went on and lied, lied, lied through her teeth about what had happened, and just pointed at Wendy's and said, like, these guys screwed up, and this is the most disgusting thing that could happen to somebody, And I'm torn up inside about it, and they should pay on on national news about a week after the incident.
Yeah, So, like you said, this is all playing out pretty quickly. It's all over the news, it's all over late night talk show comedy, just bad joke after bad joke coming out of j Leno's mouth. I won't even repeat the one that ed included.
I like the letterman one. Did you see lettermans?
What was it?
He said that she been spotted going back at Wendy's and ordering chili again because she was going back to collect all five.
That's good.
Yeah, you gotta give it up for Letterman.
What was Leno's something about him?
They don't. The chili now comes with fingernail clippers, the side of fingernail clippers, and.
That really just encapulates, encapsulates the difference between those two men.
It does, although they.
Have their joke writers, but still the love.
Of cars, I think is also a big differentiator. Yeh, I don't think Letterman really cares about cars.
Shout out to Brian Kylie and Rob Kutner.
Shout out to the mid nineties Letterman book of Top ten lists that helped shape be as a human being.
Brian and Rob are Conan O'Brien's monologue joke writers and have been for many many years.
Did I tell you you? Me and I went to see Conan O'Brien live with Ron Funches and a couple of other people. Now it was so good and we actually turned out we were stating we were sitting next to a member of the s YSK army throughout the show.
Oh no way.
Yeah. He was like are you Josh? And you and me we were like, yeah, he was a good, good guy, good.
Kids like, I'm u me, but that's not Josh right. He's like, well that's weird. I'm suspicious. Now all right, where were we? All right, it's all over the news. This is all playing out very fast. But the dragnet is sort of closing in thanks to Wendy's investigations, thanks to the cops getting involved, and uh, miss Ayala is starting to feel the heat and like anyone who And I think the cat's out of the back now, right.
I think it was put the finger in the chilly Yeah.
Anytime someone does something like that, it seems like two things happen. They bragged to their friends because they're dummies to begin with, and then that net starts to close and it all starts to fall apart.
Right. So her response, and this is a pretty human response, she basically said, once the media spotlight went from sympathetic to her to wait a minute, who are you again? And how do you explain this thing and that thing and all this, she.
Was like never mind.
Yeah, that's basically what she said. She said, You know, I can't handle this media spotlight or anything anymore. So I'm just gonna drop my lawsuit against Wendy's. We'll just forget all about this, And Wendy said, no, we're not gonna just forget all about this. No, of course, let's take a break, shall we. Yeah, we're gonna take a break.
So I can't surely when Anna Iola was like, Okay, I'm just gonna drop the lawsuit and this will go away, there had to only have been maybe one and a quarter percent of her brain that thought that that was actually going to work, that was actually going to go away. She seems like street wise and savvy enough to me that she knew it probably wasn't just going to go away, that that was nothing but hope, right, I guess I'm curious about that.
Yeah, I don't know, man, But like the more that they poke into her private life, then you learn that she and her husband, James Placentia, had there was a and this one's hard to get information onto.
From what I can.
Tell, is they sold a trailer, a trailer park trailer that did not belong to them.
Yes, for eleven thousand dollars. She did specifically, I don't know that he was involved. He may have even owned the trailer, but regardless, she did not own the trailers sold it to a woman for eleven thousand dollars, and later on the woman and her children were evicted from the trailer that they thought they owned that they didn't own.
Yes, they also learned that her husband, I guess from her previous marriage, owed a lot of money and child support. And so things are starting to fall into place to where they're like, this lady is always making up stories and suing companies. She's always looking for that get rich angle. Her husband owes a ton of money four hundred k, and so this is all sorting. They're starting to finger her, if you will, for this crime. That's the worst pun ever we met.
We all, I thought we were going to make it through this, but no, I've even been saying tipline about one finger ignoring it. I know you did, but okay, all right, it's done. It's out there.
So they finally, like you said, even though she was like, oh, let's just forget about it, they're like, no, no, no, we can't do that. And then there enters a lady that just kind of and it didn't end up having the hugest impact on the case itself, but it is worth mentioning this woman named Sandy Almond. This is a little strange. So this is a woman who owned exotic cats, big cats, leopards, jaguars, tigers.
I think, is that how we're saying jaguars now jaguar? Yeah?
Wow, it's how the brit says it on the commercial.
Is it the year in sales event up in here?
Yeah, the Jaguar X twelve. So this lady owns these big cats. This is not too far from Vegas where she lives in parump Nevada, I guess, or is it CALIFORNI on the California side, you know, I think it's okay.
I don't know actually know that you mentioned it.
And she eventually, I guess, has to get rid of these cats and calls in a rescue group that does things like this. They're like, we're a wild animal orphanage and you're a dumb dumb who bought all these animals you shouldn't have had, so now.
We will deal with it.
And during this transfer of animals, she is attacked by a spotted leopard and it bites off her finger. Yes, and she says, she comes forward and says, I think that is my finger.
No, No, I think Actually a person who is at the wildlife rescue at the time, was the one who called the tip line with that one.
Oh, I thought, because she wanted to take a DNA test and everything.
Oh I didn't see that, Okay, all right, cool. So she's the one who called and said that's my finger.
Well she wanted I don't know if she literally picked up the phone and called uh huh, but she got involved such that she wanted to take a DNA test to find out if that was her finger.
Gotcha, Okay? Cool? Cool? Well, yeah, because she had said that the last time she'd seen it it was on ice in the emergency room. So I guess she wasn't the sentimental ties hypoo's like I want my finger back, would you?
Oh yeah, floated from aldehyde.
You me would probably have that thing gilded and wear it around her neck. Yeah, I'd be like, that's my finger on ubi's neck. Check it out. But so the whole thing was just a red herring though a blind alley right, like it went nowhere.
No, it was not her finger.
No. There were some other tips that came in about the finger. There were the Mexican authorities, I guess just over the border got involved because it was rumored that an incident with a ranch hand losing a finger in Mexico had been the source of the finger, as even as Anna Iola, who, by the way, that whole tip about the trailer sail. Yeah, the trailer scam that came in from Wendy's hotline as well. Oh really, by this time, I believe it was day twenty two. No, I'm sorry,
it was day thirty thirty two. I believe about a month after the incident originally happened. Ana Ayala and Jamie Palencia Plazentia, her husband, were both arrested in Las Vegas, him for the child support payments failure to pay child support, her for that trailer scam. And so while they're on ice in Las Vegas, Wendy's is still conducting this investigation. San Jose are still conducting this investigation, and they've got them,
they have them on this other stuff. But I guess they just kind of kept them from running and that's why they arrested them, knowing that they were eventually going to build the case. I'm not sure, but that's exactly what happened, because I think about fifty two days after she walked into that Wendy's and put the finger in the chili and took that bite. They charged them for grand theft, for basically defrauding Wendy's.
Yeah, and at this point, as far as the police were concerned, they're like, we don't even need to know who's finger this is at this point, right, like that
that's really immaterial. But Wendy's they still have a public relations crisis going on, and they're like, we really would like to find out where this finger came from, just so like as many facts out there as possible will really help us restore our good name, right if we can actually pinpoint whose finger this is and exactly how this happened and let everybody know what went on.
Yeah, so they they actually that's when they up the the reward from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand, right, that's right, And that's when they hit the jackpot, which is ironically, they got two callers on the one hundred thousand dollars line.
Go ahead, collar, you're on the one hundred thousand dollars chili finger line, right.
And then for the next thirty second he's like, hello, am I on Can you hear me? Yes, you're on You're on collar, Collar, Am I live right now? They call the two people called. One to this day, as far as I can tell, has remained anonymous. The other one was a guy named Mike Casey, and Mike Casey owned a company called Lamb Asphalt out of Las Vegas, Nevada. And he happened to be the employer of Jamie Pleazentia.
That's right.
And he said, it's weird because you arrested one of my employees, one of my longtime employees, for this scam. And I also have another employee named Brian Rossiter who lost a finger not too long ago, and I think they might be connected. I think that might be Brian Rossiter's finger. And that's how the whole thing finally came crashing down because they got a hold of Brian Rossiter, they got a they gave him a DNA test, They matched it to the DNA taken from the finger, and
they said it's Brian Rossiter's finger. Brian Rossiter worked with Jamie Plazentia. Jamie Plazentia was married to Anna Ayola. Ana Ayola found a finger in her chili ipso facto, something's rotten in Denmark and that's how it stands.
Yeah, and it's even a little weirder when you find out the details. So Brian is at work, someone slams a tailgate of the truck on his hand, cuts an inch and a half off of his finger.
Can you imagine the dude no cuts off his finger.
And it's funny too, because Ed points out, instead of like driving to the hospital, which is what any normal person would have done, he had owed Placentia some money placentia. And this is a man, a husband of a woman who and it seems like they're both always looking to scam somebody.
And they're looking for the angle.
He sees this finger and he goes, hey, you owe me money. Some people say it was fifty bucks. We don't know for sure.
I saw a hundred almost everywhere.
Okay, so let's say it's one hundred.
Okay.
He's like, you give me that finger and we'll just call it square. And not only that, my friend, but if you ever hear about this finger in the news, keep it quiet, and I will give you a quarter of a million dollars at some point in the future.
Yep. That's what they call the carrot and the other carrot.
Yeah, so he said, just drip some blood on this roof shingle and that will be our contract.
Right right right to sign X with your stub, your bloody stub.
How this old used roof shingle.
I saw, actually I saw that he did go to the hospital and came back to the work site with his amputated finger. And that's what Jamie pleasidants. He was like, hey, I'm sure he did.
What are you gonna do with that any sense at all? Yeah, that he would just be like, wait a minute.
So Brian Rossiter gives him his finger, and that's where the whole thing began, just a couple months before, right.
Yeah, And I think didn't Rossiter himself also called the tip line.
I didn't see that anywhere.
Okay, I heard he called the tip line himself because he knew at this point he was getting no money out of the scam, so he thought, let me try and get this hundred grand at least, right, And Wendy's never would cop to whether or not he got any tip line money, right.
And so Mike Casey, the guy who from all from everything that it seems he was innocent of this, he just happened to put two and two together because he knew the guys. He said Originally, Hey, you know, my asphalt company maintains the lots of a few Wendy's around here, and they've always been good to me, so I wanted to help out. That was an article in May. An article in September is Mike Casey saying, you know, Wendy's
never paid me that money for the hotline. So I don't know if he ever got it, but from what I saw, he was going to have to split it with the one other anonymous caller. I don't know if that was Brian Rossiter or not. Maybe Brian Rossterter was scared that Jamie Plasencia might do something if he found out that he had been he had tipped him off for what. But supposedly Mike Casey and this anonymous caller
were going to split that one hundred grand. So whether Wendy's actually pay that money or not, that remains to be seen. I don't know. I didn't see that anywhere.
Well.
In the end, a Yella and her husband, she got sentenced to nine years, he got sentenced to twelve because I think they piled on him for the probably child support right or was it the trailer scam?
Yeah, no, he got three and a third years for the child support thing.
Oh okay, I don't know how long he actually served. I think she only served about four of that nine. She later revealed some more details, including that she did cook the finger. Yeah, apparently it was not a It wasn't a raw finger, nor though was it cooked in one hundred and seventy degree chili for three hours.
But it was cooked a little bit.
I think she just literally probably put it in a pan and was thinking like, oh, wait a minute. I bet they didn't think I would think of this right, and cooked up the finger a little bit.
One thing that she didn't think of the chuck was she didn't bite the finger, and they found out pretty quickly through forensic investigation that there was no bite in the finger.
Nor did she throw up in the restaurant like she said she did, because there were people in the restaurant that were like, no, she didn't vomit that I saw, and employees were like, no, she didn't throw up that I saw.
Her father in law and mother in law both said that they saw her throw up, But yeah, there was no evidence of vomit anywhere in the bathroom or around her table or anything.
Yeah, and they did a pretty bad job.
Yeah they did. I was gonna use a nasty word to characterize it, but I guess the family show so well.
These are the worst kind of people, man, These litigious like just like work for your money man, going around sueing corporations.
I know. So wendy supposedly lost two point five million dollars in verifiable lost money. They had to cut people's hours. This is another thing that kind of gets left off a lot. They had to cut the hours of the employees in the Bay Area, in particular because there was such little foot traffic coming through their stores. So when they were convicted and sentenced, Jamie Plazentia and Anna Ayala were sentenced to pay back one hundred and seventy thousand
plus dollars in lost wages to the Wendy's employees. Oh and they were also ordered to pay five hundred thousand to jem Management, who owned the Wendy's, and then like another another substantial amount to Wendy's if they ever profited from the crime.
Man, bad people. She was banned from Wendy's, which I don't know how you enforce that.
Yeah, I was wondering that myself. Actually, it seems like I don't know if there's every Wendy's has a picture of her or something like that.
I know what's sports stadiums They do that when people are banned, and that is a little more enforceable because like you can literally just have everyone be aware of that person. That's like checking tickets and things. But you can't How can you keep someone from coming into any Wendy's anywhere?
I don't know. They can try. At least they can send a message by saying you can't come here any longer.
Arbi's two fingers two thousand and four, twenty twelve, No Cole's Frozen Custard in Wilmington, North Carolina, finger two thousand and five. Oh Media Friday's Hamburger had a finger in two thousand and six. Wow, And those are all verified and they found, you know, like it was in the supply chain, like someone lost a finger and it got mixed in And it's very just very unfortunate. I'm sure there were quiet settlements on those.
I'm sure too. It's bizarre. I had no idea that that happened. I thought it was almost always either a case of mistaken identity or a hoax. I didn't realize that actually really happened, you know. Oh yeah, well that's the Wendy's Chili finger caper. If you ever wanted to know about it, now you do, and we're glad that you do. We're glad we're the ones that told you. And if you want to know more about it, go read contemporary articles at the time. It's awesome just to
see something like that unfold. It's so cool. And since I said that, it's time for listener, Mayle.
And hey, shout out to Wendy's.
I'm sure I don't know if they like people still talking about this or not, but they did not put a finger in anyone's chili.
Yeah, good point to make that clear.
Good point.
All are you even gonna call this Adidas Puma? Hey, guys, just finished listening to the feud between Addie and Rudy Dossler. I wanted to say, I really enjoyed it. My dad is actually from Hertzogenerach. We were an Adidas family through and through, and my godmother and aunt, Helga worked for Adidas as an administrative assistant for years. In addition to this,
almost jumped out of my seat. When you mentioned the mayor of Herzo, you spoke of doctor Gerrman Hawker and how he repped a soccer match wearing one Adidas shoe in one Puma.
My uncle Hans was the mayor right before Hawker was Oh cool.
Yeah, I knew you wouldn't be referring to him because he wouldn't have been caught dead in even one Puma because of my aunt's work at the opposing shop. I didn't wear Puma gear at myself until I was grown and could buy it myself, and my entire German family called me a trader. And this was in the early two thousand, so the tension is still real.
Wow.
I'm sure it was lighthearted at least I hope it was okay. In any case, I just want to let you know your research was spot on. Billy love hearing about something I knew a little bit about. By the way, I also use your show in my classroom teaching twelfth grade government in Civics, and the kids.
Love it nice.
So a shout out to Jennifer Wessner Gajo at Thompson Stations, Tennessee and your senior government class.
Well. Thank you, Mss Gajo. And class.
That's probably not pronounced right.
Gaujo.
I have no idea.
Gaucho ganev, Yeah, gan show Ganev. That's what it is. If you want to get in touch with us to say hi about old episode or for whatever reason, you can go on to stuff youshould Know dot com, check out our social media links, and you can also send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.