The bribery scheme that led to chicken with metal, plastic and “foreign matter” being served to New York City public school students and staff was consummated in a text message from a senior education department official in 2015: “I’m going to buy a lot of f–king chicken from you guys. Let’s do the beef.”
That saga culminated last week in Brooklyn Federal Court, when Eric Goldstein, who oversaw school food for the education department, was sentenced to two years in prison. Three executives of Texas-based startup SOMMA Food Group — Blaine Iler, Michael Turley and Brian Twomey — received more than a year in prison each for their roles in the scheme.
As the head of the Office of School Support Services, Goldstein was responsible for feeding roughly 1 million students. He managed a budget of $500 million as well as the city’s complex and often dysfunctional bus system.
SOMMA, cofounded in 2015, sold food products to schools. Goldstein, 56, knew one of the cofounders from working together earlier in their careers at Tyson Foods.
A chicken drumstick with a piece of metal shown at the trial of former education official Eric Goldstein.
Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office
New York City Conflict of Interest rules say employees cannot use their positions to financially benefit themselves or their family members and cannot accept anything valued at $50 or more from anyone they know is doing business with the city. They also cannot own any sort of business that they know is doing business with the city.
But prosecutors in his trial said Goldstein — with a family to support and his credit cards maxed out — started cooking up a plan for a new beef business to make more money.
“This right here, this is what corruption looks like, by sophisticated players,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Zuckerwise said in closing statements. “It’s not bags of cash exchanged in the dark of night. It’s the creation of a corrupt side business. It’s the transfer of $100,000, and it’s action after action after action taken by a public official to benefit a private interest …at the expense of New York City’s public school children.”
The scheme, according to prosecutors, centered on a quid pro quo in which the SOMMA executives paid nearly $100,000 in bribes to Goldstein, disguising the payments as support for his new beef venture, in return for Goldstein’s purchase of SOMMA products for school cafeterias. The executives also paid for Goldstein’s hotel in Poland on a trip to scout cows for his beef business. Prosecutors said the SOMMA executives even had a code name for Goldstein: Roger Rabbit.
At trial, prosecutors said Goldstein “stepped in” and ordered SOMMA products be purchased, including yogurt parfaits, chicken drumsticks and chicken tenders. The executives, meanwhile, pressured Goldstein to expedite approval of purchases of food and demanded the drumsticks be placed on school menus twice a month.
But according to court documents, SOMMA buckled under the demand from the nation’s largest school system, putting students’ health at risk. The company didn’t send enough chicken to fulfill orders. Other products showed up with problems. The company’s yogurt parfaits arrived leaking in broken packaging, some literally taped together. Students and staff were served chicken drumsticks with what prosecutors described as “foreign matter,” including metal and plastic.
Photos of the food submitted as evidence include one of a metal shard sticking out of a chicken leg. A photo of a partially eaten chicken drumstick shows red ooze dripping on a paper plate.
But even after the first shards were found in chicken tenders, Goldstein kept the orders coming.
A schools employee choked on a bone inside a chicken tender and had to be given the Heimlich maneuver in late 2016. That resulted in SOMMA’s chicken products being temporarily pulled from cafeterias, until the businessmen paid Goldstein a $66,000 bribe, evidence showed. Goldstein then approved the reintroduction of the products. It wasn’t until April 2017 when the education department ceased doing business with the company following repeated complaints about foreign objects in the chicken.
A chicken drumstick with red ooze coming out of it that was shown in the tainted tenders trial of Eric Goldstein.
Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office
Goldstein was fired from the education department in 2018 and arrested in 2021. His lawyer declined comment.
“Great responsibility came with overseeing the school system’s food operations, but shamefully, Goldstein prioritized lining his pockets with payoffs from his co-defendants to ensure the DOE purchased their products and that their food stayed in the schools even after plastic, bones and metal were found in the chicken served to schoolchildren and teachers,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said.
In a statement, education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said the agency has “implemented strong compliance measures and oversight for all menu development and food purchase processes.”
“Everything we do is in service of our children and our families — a sentiment that is championed by our food service and operations teams,” she said. “We are immensely proud that all our school meals not only meet, but exceed, USDA food standards, and are created with and in ongoing response to student feedback. … Our students deserve nothing but the best, and at New York City Public Schools, we work hard in pursuit of that goal.”
Ahead of his sentencing, Goldstein wrote to the judge “pleading for mercy:”
“I am writing to you as a deeply remorseful, broken, defeated, publicly humiliated man who is utterly terrified for what will happen to his two sons, former spouse and loved ones,” he wrote. “I wear the unfading scarlet letter of felon and failure. Never did I think I would find myself in such an utterly pathetic and unenviable position.”
“I have always strived,” Goldstein added, “to do what I thought were good things and to help people wherever I could in whatever way I could because I knew that I could easily be in someone else’s shoes.”