Free Republic

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A man who lost part of his finger in a workplace accident was the source of the fingertip used in an alleged scam against Wendy's restaurants, and gave it away to settle a debt, his mother said. "My son is the victim in this," Brenda Shouey said in an interview published in Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle. "I believe he got caught in something, and he didn't understand what was going on." Anna Ayala, 39, was arrested April 21 at her Las Vegas home on suspicion of attempted grand theft for allegedly costing Wendy's millions of dollars...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The finger that a woman claimed she found in a bowl of Wendy's chili was severed in the tailgate of a truck during a work accident, an employee of an asphalt company said. Pat Hogue, an estimator with a Las Vegas asphalt maintenance company, told the San Francisco Chronicle for a story in Sunday's editions that a man he was working with lost the tip of his finger on a job five months ago. Both men were working with James Plascencia, the husband of Anna Ayala - the Las Vegas woman who claimed she found the...

The Las Vegas man whose severed fingertip ended up in a cup of Wendy's chili gave his mangled digit to a co-worker to settle a $50 debt -- but had no idea it would be used in an alleged scheme to swindle the fast-food chain, the man's mother said Tuesday. San Jose police have refused to name the man whose finger they believe ended up in the chili. But the man's mother, reached by The Chronicle on Tuesday, said the finger belonged to her 36-year-old son, Brian Paul Rossiter of Las Vegas. "My son is the victim in this,'' Rossiter's...

Joanne Borgerding was sitting in a packed Eagan McDonald's at lunchtime, eating a chicken sandwich and reading a book when something moved beneath her booth. Dancing in the air by her legs were "little movable eyes" that were attached to a dark, 2-foot-long snake. "I looked face to face at it," Borgerding said. "I know people in the drive-up heard me — I screamed that loud." Borgerding also flew out of her booth and in the process injured her foot so badly that she says she has permanent nerve damage. She asked McDonald's insurance company to pay her medical bills,...