Global Courant
NEW YORK — A man who oversaw food supplies for New York City schools was convicted Wednesday in a bribery case in which he revealed how chicken tenders riddled with bone and bits of metal were served for months in the nation’s largest public school system.
Former Department of Education official Eric Goldstein and three men who set up a school food vendor — Blaine Iler, Michael Turley and Brian Twomey — were found guilty of bribery, conspiracy and other charges after a month-long trial.
It delved into school menus, from yogurt parfait to ravioli. And the lawsuit gave jurors a gut-wrenching look at what some students and school staff encountered when a brand called Chickentopia appeared on their plates in 2016 and 2017.
“Our children depended on nutritious meals served in schools and were instead fed substandard food items containing bits of plastic, metal and bones,” Brooklyn-based U.S. attorney Breon Peace said in a statement Wednesday. He called the case “a textbook example of choosing greed over the welfare of children.
Goldstein’s attorney, Kannan Sundaram, declined to comment. Messages requesting comment were sent to the city’s Department of Education and to the attorneys for Iler and Twomey, both of Dallas, and Turley, of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
The charges carry a prison sentence of 20 years. No date has yet been set for sentencing.
As head of the school system’s Office of School Support Services from 2008 to 2018, Goldstein oversaw the food service operation known as SchoolFood, among other things. Iler, Twomey, and Turley ran a company, SOMMA Food Group, with the New York City school system in mind.
Around the same time, the three men and Goldstein formed another company to import grass-fed beef. Prosecutors argued that the venture amounted to a conduit to pay off Goldstein.
SOMMA’s founders “made sure to pocket the key decision maker at SchoolFood so he would make sure the DOE would serve a lot of their food products,” assistant attorney Laura Zuckerwise said in a closing argument this week. Eric Goldstein also got what he wanted. He cashed in the power and resources and influence of his office to enrich himself.”
According to prosecutors, Iler, Turley and Twomey paid thousands of dollars to Goldstein and his divorce attorney. Meanwhile, Goldstein helped ensure that the school system purchased Chickentopia items and other SOMMA products, sometimes at lightning speed.
Then, in September 2016, SOMMA hit a snag: A school system employee choked on a bone in a so-called chicken breast Chickentopia and required the Heimlich maneuver, according to documents presented at trial. For a time, schools stopped serving the company’s chicken tenders.
Two months later, they were allowed back — a day after SOMMA’s founders agreed to pay Goldstein $66,670 and give him their shares of the beef trade. Goldstein then signed on to reintroduce Chickentopia products, prosecutors said.
The offers came out again. So did complaints about foreign objects in it. According to prosecutors, SchoolFood finally dumped SOMMA products in April 2017.
Goldstein testified that he could not single-handedly ensure that a product was purchased, and said the “highly secured process” could involve a dozen decision makers. Fast-tracking didn’t mean skipping steps, he said.
He insisted that he carefully separate his personal affairs from his city work.
“I always made sure my DOE responsibilities came first,” he told the judges.
His defense refuted claims that the payments from his beef business partners were bribes, saying the amounts were for things like reimbursing travel expenses.
