A Midwestern Man Resold 100,000 Pounds of Filthy, Condemned Cheese

Loving cheese means you're willing to accept some degree of funk. It's a food born of bacteria and mold, with end results that can range from purely pungent to smash-your-sinus nasty. It's a food that revels in odors and ooze, where nastiness isn't just tolerated—it's celebrated.

But there's some cheese that is simply too gross to eat (bear with us here). A Midwestern man was just convicted for scraping slimy, salmonella-laced fungal filth off literal tons of FDA-rejected cheese, then packaging and selling it to consumers.

Miguel Leal, former president of Mexican Cheese Producers Inc. in Darlington, Wisconsin, will pay a $750,000 fine and spend five days in federal prison. He, along with three co-conspirators, committed such egregious cheese fraud that it might border on impressive—if it wasn't so foul.

The cheese in question is called Queso Cincho de Guerrero, Mexican-made and imported in bulk. Back in 2007, the FDA took out their magnifying glasses and turned up samples of cheese that "contained violative presence of micro-biologic material and filth." Even worse, they found salmonella, E. coli, alkaline phosphatase and staphylococcus. Nasty stuff.

There were several shipments in question, each made at different times of 2007. One shipment, made in April, was ultimately downgraded by the FDA from "hold" to "refuse." This translates to "destroy this cheese"—Leal and cohorts did not take heed.

Instead, they embarked on a large-scale shell game, scraping off the cheese's diseased outer layers (a.k.a. "washing"), then sending 100,986 pounds of it around the US. To thwart the FDA, they pulled evasive maneuvers like showing inspectors 311 cases of clean "stand-in cheese"; the bad cheese had already been sold. Fake bills of lading were drafted, inspectors fibbed to.

Additionally, some tainted cheese wheels were returned by Mexican Cheese Producer's customers; apparently it didn't take FDA scientists to determine they weren't right. The returned cheese was then washed and resold.

In court, Leal appeared contrite, crying and opening up about his suicide attempts—he spent time in a psychiatric ward following his arrest. It was unclear to the judge if Leal had directly ordered the cover-up or if it had simply happened under his watch. Prosecutors had requested ten to 16 months in prison; he got five days.

Considering the $750,000 fine, his punishment was still the harshest of the four indicted; financial manager Cynthia Gutierrez did get five years probation. Bonus spanking: Leal, a skeet-shooting Olympic hopeful, will not be able to own a gun.