Grubby grub

While the dine-and-dash might save you a few bucks, it doesn’t do much for one’s dignity. One Indiana couple thought they’d found the perfect alternative; they’d eat their fill, then dump a few worms onto the food and hope the embarrassed restaurant would pick up their tab.

It worked like a charm too. Tiffany Vance and Christopher Egnatz feasted on $57-worth of Applebee’s delicacies, then loudly faked their unappetizing discovery. Wanting to keep things on the QT, restaurant staff let the pair leave without paying, the maggot-like bee-moth worms still wriggling in the leafy corpse of Vance’s picked over salad. But sometimes even an evil genius can forget her purse, and when that purse contains the evidence of her crime, arrest often follows.

When staff found the bag, they opened it to look for ID and, alongside Vance’s wallet, discovered a plastic container filled with worms. Realizing they’d been conned, the staff called police, who arrived just moments before Egnatz came back looking for Vance’s bag.

Egnatz pinned all blame on Vance and told police where to find her. On her arrest, Vance insisted Egnatz had wormed the food. Both face charges in the scam.

by Scott Saxon