A man in Spain has been jailed after he nicked and resold 7,000 hams from his employer, defrauding them out of a whopping €520,000 (£439,000).
The unnamed bloke, from Huelva in the south of Spain, pinched the cuts of meat from the curing warehouse he worked at over a six-year period between 2007 and 2013.
The hamburglar was tasked with taking delivery of the ham - or jamón as it is known in Spain - and was supposed to be responsible for looking after it throughout the whole curing process.
However, unbeknown to his bosses, the man was stealing and flogging the meats, even enlisting the use of a messenger service to deliver them to his customers.
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The man had originally been facing a lengthy stretch of six years inside, but this was reduced to just 11 months and 29 days because the case took such a long time to go to trial, the Guardian reports. I could make a joke about that delay saving his bacon, but I’d like to think I’m better than that.
The pork pincher’s wife was also convicted as an accomplice to the crimes, and the couple was ordered to repay €529,900 to his former employer. Ouch.
Huelva is famous for jamón de Jabugo, which is made using special blackfoot pigs that are fed entirely on acorns for the last three months of their lives to improve flavour.
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The fancy cuts of meat come at a high price, with one jamón de Jabugo setting you back more than €500.
Of the 7,000 our swine swiper made off with, more than 100 of them were the pricey jamón de Jabugo variety.
Believe it or not, this isn’t the first large-scale ham heist to go off in Spain, where the cured meats are popular.
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Back in December 2019, a thief managed to make off with more than 300 legs of jamón - worth more than €40,000 - after the lorry driver carrying the ham pulled over for a nap on Las Pedrizas motorway, in Malaga.
The poor driver woke up from his kip at around 05:45am to discover his truck had been busted open and his jamón gone.
The hams were reported to be worth around €140 apiece, meaning the thief made off at least €42,000’s worth of meat.
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Topics: Weird, Crime, Food and Drink
Claire Reid