A South Texas juvenile justice department employee is accused of stealing $1.2 million worth of fajitas over nine years through county-funded purchases.

The scheme unraveled Aug. 7 when Gilberto Escaramilla took a day off work and someone else answered the phone at the Cameron County Juvenile Justice Department kitchen, the Brownsville Herald reported.

A driver from Labatt Food Service in Harlingen was calling to inform the kitchen of an 800-pound delivery of fajitas.

The woman who answered the phone was alarmed: The juvenile department's kitchen does not serve fajitas.

The driver told her he had been delivering fajitas there for the last nine years, Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz told the Herald.

The woman quickly informed a supervisor. Escaramilla was fired the next day and arrested the day after that. That order had been worth enough to charge Escaramilla with a state jail felony theft, $2,500 and $30,000.

When officers searched Escaramilla's house they found packages of the Tex-Mex food in his refrigerator.

"If it wasn't so serious, you'd think it was a Saturday Night Live skit," Saenz said. "But this is the real thing."

Escaramilla posted bond and was released from jail. But he was arrested again Tuesday on a more serious theft charge after a district attorney's office investigation.

Officials alleged Escaramilla took $1,251,578 worth of fajita orders and delivered them to his own customers, the Herald reported.

"He would literally, on the day he ordered them, deliver them to customers he had already lined up," Saenz said. "We've been able to uncover two of his purchasers, and they are cooperating with the investigation."

He told the Herald that taxpayers have the right to be upset and said the Juvenile Justice Department had been consistently exceeding its line item budget.

"Up and down the chain of authority, people were signing off on these things," Saenz said. "It's upsetting because the auditor gets a detailed invoice where it states the breakdown of what's delivered, so they should've seen it."

Rose Gomez, the department's chief juvenile probation officer, said the department is working to institute policy changes to avoid a repeat of the fajita incident.

"The Department will continue to strive to provide necessary and appropriate care, custody and protection of those juveniles in its custody as well as protection of public moneys," she said in a written statement to the Herald.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.