Key Takeaways
- Keyshun Jones says he targeted Chick-fil-A’s mac and cheese because catering trays cost about $100 each, allowing him to generate more than $80,000 through roughly 800 fake orders and refunds.
- The 23-year-old former employee blamed anger and an impulsive decision rather than a premeditated plan, saying, “I went, and I made a bad decision.”
- Jones received a three-year prison sentence with credit for time served and hopes Chick-fil-A will give him a second chance after parole.
The former Chick-fil-A employee who turned mac and cheese refunds into an $80,000 fraud scheme is finally explaining why he picked the side dish—and, according to him, there was a very practical reason. Keyshun Jones says the restaurant’s catering-sized mac and cheese was simply expensive enough to rack up serious money fast.
“As good and delicious as our mac and cheese is, it is unfortunately one of our most expensive items,” Jones told the New York Post from jail in Tarrant County. Large catering trays can run roughly $100 each, which made them useful for what prosecutors said became hundreds of bogus transactions.
Jones, 23, pleaded guilty earlier this month after authorities accused him of processing about 800 fake Chick-fil-A mac and cheese orders and sending the resulting refunds to his personal credit cards. He was sentenced on August 13 to three years in prison, with credit for time already served. Prosecutors had reportedly sought a 10-year sentence.
But Jones insists the scheme was not something he carefully mapped out beforehand. He said he had worked for Chick-fil-A for seven years before losing his job and later returned to the Grapevine, Texas, restaurant to eat with friends. While there, he says he noticed an unattended register and acted on impulse.
“Everyone thinks it was more premeditated, ‘Oh, I went in there with a plan,’” Jones said. “That was definitely not the case.”
Instead, he blamed anger over how things had ended with the company. “I let anger, as most people do, let anger and those feelings get in the way, and I went, and I made a bad decision,” he said.
That bad decision became an unusually expensive one. Grapevine police previously said surveillance footage showed Jones behind the counter without authorization, ringing up tray after tray before issuing refunds to his own cards. The transactions totaled more than $80,000.
After a months-long investigation, Jones was arrested in April with assistance from the Texas Attorney General’s Fugitive Task Force and Fort Worth police. He initially faced charges including property theft, money laundering, and evading arrest.
Jones now says he hopes prison will not permanently end his restaurant career—which, remarkably, he would still like to continue at Chick-fil-A.
“I love Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A is my career,” he said. “I’ve been there since I was 15 years old; it was my first job. And I hated that things had to end that way.”
He acknowledged his former employer may not be rushing to put him back behind a register but said he wants another chance once he is eligible for parole.
“I’m not what the internet claims me to be,” Jones said. “Hopefully I can show the rest of the world that I’m worth that second chance.”
For now, his relationship with the dish at the center of the case has taken an ironic turn. Jones said jail has served mac and cheese exactly once since he arrived.
“The irony of it all,” he said.
