Feathers are flying at cluck-ingham Palace, the Pittsburg, Tex. mansion of Lonnie (Bo) Pilgrim. The 79-year-old founder and chairman of Pilgrims Pride, the nation's biggest chicken processor ($7.4 billion sales), had barely caught his breath following the sudden death in mid-December of Chief Executive O.B. Goolsby, when he faced a fresh crisis. On Jan. 8 a federal grand jury returned indictments against 20 Pilgrim employees. (No one has yet entered a plea.) Five people have been charged with peddling stolen Social Security numbers and forged documents to illegal immigrants looking for work at one of the company's slaughterhouses, in Mount Pleasant, Tex. Says Alan Jackson, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the suspects, "Identity theft is what makes the case."
展开▼
