FOOD CRIME STORIES

I Lead-in.

1)    Take 1 minute to write down your associations with the word ‘food’. Work in pairs and compare your lists. What are the similarities and differences in your lists? 

2)    Take 1 minute to write down your associations with the word ‘crime’. Work in pairs and compare your lists. What are the similarities and differences in your lists? 

3)     How can food and crime be connected? What types of food can be interesting for criminals?

 

II Vocabulary focus. Match the words to their definitions. Use three words in your sentences.

1.	fictitious	A.	to buy
2.	to obtain	B.	wet and soft
3.	to purchase	C.	an organized group of criminals
4.	illicitly	D.	not real, fabricated
5.	soggy	E.	illegally
6.	sliced	F.	cut into flat pieces
7.	gang	G.	to get

 

III Read the food crime stories below. Fill in the blanks in the stories with food words from the list. You will use some words several times. There are words you don’t need to use.

 

soy beans; lamb; peas; tomatoes; toppings; bread; cheese; fried eggs; corn; raspberry; cucumbers; mussels; frozen chicken wings; beef; sea bass; lobster; prawns; oysters

 

CRIME STORY 1.

 

Paul Diogenes, 49, created a fictitious (not real, fabricated) catering company, listing his brother as president, in order to obtain (get) credit from food distributors to purchase (buy) more than $831,769 in product, including hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of ______, ______ _____, ______, ______, ______, ______, and ______. Diogenes used stolen banking information from several well-known seafood restaurants and steakhouses to obtain funds to pay for some of these products.

CRIME STORY 2.

A joint US-Canadian investigation found C$200,000 (£125,600) of ______and other dairy products were illicitly brought over the border (illegally transported) into southern Ontario. Three men were arrested for buying brick ______ (most commonly used for pizza ______) in the US, and then taking it to Canada hidden in their cars.  The criminals sold large quantities of ______, which is cheaper in the US, to pizzerias.

 

CRIME STORY 3.

Takashi Ishimoto, a Tokyo resident created a plan involving soggy (wet and soft)  ______.

The plan was carefully carried out:

Step 1: Ishimoto contacted a baker’s and pretended that he had bought sliced ______from them; the ______was  soggy and he was not satisfied.

Step 2: Ishimoto then phoned the shop again and pretended to be a boss from the head office. He asked the shop to give the customer some replacement ______and all the cash they had taken for that day.

Step 3: Ishimoto repeated for all the local stores over five years.

Step 4: Ishimoto got $200,000.

CRIME STORY 4.

At 5:30 a.m. Saturday, two people dressed in dark clothing broke into the KFC restaurant in Chipley, Florida. They stole $5,000 worth of _____     _______      ____.

 CRIME STORY 5.

In 2011, rocketing prices led to a rise in crimes relating to vegetables. In Florida, one gang of criminals stole six tractor loads of _____ worth $300,000, which also included a truck full of ______, ______   ______and ______, and ______. The price rises were caused by a bad harvest in Mexico.

 

IV Answer the questions.

1.    What did Paul Diogenes in story 1 create to get credit? He created a fictitious catering company, listing his brother as president.

2.    How did Diogenes obtain funds to pay for some of the products? He used stolen banking information from several well-known seafood restaurants and steakhouses.

3.    Why did criminals illegally transport dairy products to Canada? Criminals illegally transported dairy products from the US to Canada because dairy products were cheaper in the US.

4.    What companies bought illegally transported dairy products in crime story 2? The criminals sold large quantities dairy products to pizzerias.

5.    How did Takashi Ishimoto get money from baker’s shops? Ishimoto pretended to be a boss from the head office; he asked the shop to give the unhappy customer (and he also pretended to be that unhappy customer) some replacement food and all the money they had that day.

6.    Why were vegetables in crime story 5 expensive and criminals decide to steal them? The price rises were caused by a bad harvest in Mexico.

 

V  Study the definitions of different types of crime. Read crime stories in Task III again and name type of the crime in every story. Some types of crime will be used twice.

fraud - getting money by deceiving people, for example false representation of facts, pretending to be a different person, pretending to offer products or services that do not exist.

smuggling  - illegal transportation of objects, information or people, across an international border.

burglary - illegally entering a building ( a house, flat or shop) and stealing things.

theft - the crime of taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission,  stealing

 

VI Vocabulary focus. Follow the link below. Study the words and  word combinations using flashcards, check your understanding, practise their  spelling. Check your knowledge in the test. Play matching vocabulary game (match words to their translations to make cards disappear)  and save the planet from asteroids by typing in correct words.

 

VII OVER TO YOU. Discuss the questions with other students.

A)  Discuss the crimes described in food crime stories. What crime in your opinion was the cleverest?  What crime was the easiest for the criminals? Why?

B)   Find information about a food crime story from your country. Share it with other students but do not name the type of crime. Let other students guess the type of crime (fraud, theft, etc.).