A couple who planted a human finger in a bowl of chilli at a Wendy?s fast food restaurant was sentenced in California on Wednesday to nine years in prison. ?Greed and avarice overtook this couple and they lost their moral compass,? Judge Edward Davila said of Anna Ayala and her husband Jaime Plascencia in handing down the nine-year sentence.

The scam caused a sharp fall in sales at the third-largest US burger chain, resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue and a lingering impact to this day, officials say. Investigators determined Plascencia obtained the piece of finger from a co-worker who had lost the top of a digit in an industrial accident at a Las Vegas paving company. The man had turned over the finger fragment to settle a $ 50 debt. Wendy?s International, based in Dublin, Ohio, paid a $ 100,000 reward for information to help establish the source of the severed finger.

?I am truly sorry. I owe Wendy?s and its employees an apology,? a sobbing Ayala told the court. ?Wendy?s had always been my family?s favourite fast food restaurant.? Ayala, 40, who had been a Las Vegas resident, had said that she discovered the finger after buying the bowl of chilli last March. She complained about the experience on national television and hired a lawyer, attracting wide attention to the bizarre incident.