Two all-beef patties, special sauce and... shards of broken glass?
A former McDonald's employee who was accused of spiking a New York City police officer's Big Mac with broken glass a decade ago has just been awarded $437,000 by the city after convincing a court that the cop made the story up to get money out of the fast food franchise.
Per the Associated Press, Albert Garcia — who was just 18 at the time of the alleged Big Mac incident and has an IQ of 81 — "initially confessed after being questioned by four detectives for hours in a small, windowless room in the Bronx restaurant." (He soon recanted his confession.) The accusing police officer, John Florio, sued the McDonald's franchise owner for a whopping $6 million shortly after the alleged incident, but was awarded just $15,000. Depositions given during the cop's lawsuit "revealed enough inconsistencies in the officers' testimonies that the state's highest court unexpectedly decided to hear the assault case this year," says the AP, leading to the $437K settlement.
In addition to emergency room records that show Florio "suffered from no apparent symptoms of swallowing glass," other employees at the McDonald's location also testified that Garcia was late to work that day and therefore wasn't even working when Florio got his burger; that seemingly game-changing bit of info apparently "never found its way into a crucial police report."
Some people apparently see the fast food giant as an ideal target for scamming big money: Earlier this month a California woman claimed too-hot McDonald's coffee gave her second degree burns, but the photos turned out to be fake and she's now facing felony charges for insurance and workers' compensation fraud.
