This is the face of a man who steals cheese

This is the face of a man who steals cheese.

Did you know that cheese is the most stolen of all food products? Up to 4 percent of cheese is stolen at some point during its cheesy life. A lot of that is shoplifting, but some of it is organized cheese crime, like the $200,000 worth of Muenster cheese a man stole recently in Wisconsin. (It WOULD be Wisconsin, wouldn’t it.) His plan was to sell the cheese to retailers on the East Coast, a feat which one East Coast cheese retailer said “wouldn’t really be that hard.” Apparently there’s a robust black market for cheese?

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The thief, one Veniamin Konstantinovich Balika, provided false paperwork to obtain the 42,000 pounds of cheese. It was supposed to find its way to Texas, because you know Texans just love going to high school football games and not forgetting the Alamo and then going home and eating tons of Muenster cheese. But Balika rerouted the cheese shipment east, until he was apprehended in New Jersey.

The cheese will go to charity. The thief will go to a special jail for people who steal cheese. No, that’s not true. But maybe we need one of those. And one of the features of the internment there is that you do not get to eat any cheese.

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