The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street

3. Pilgrim's Pride Squawks

World leader in fowl production Pilgrim's Pride PPC chickened out on its workers Wednesday, tipping the feds as to the whereabouts of hundreds of its own illegal employees.

Homeland Security operatives stormed five of the poultry provider's compounds, plucking about 400 workers from their jobs and placing them under arrest.

Apparently, management squawked on the illegals, alerting law-enforcement officials to a potential identity-theft operation linked to some of its Arkansas employees.

In a press release on the matter, Pilgrim's Pride disowned the former tenders of its chickens: "We share the government's goal of eliminating the hiring or employment of unauthorized workers," it said. Meanwhile, the firm was quick to point out that "No civil or criminal charges, including charges that Pilgrim's knowingly hired these employees or conspired to hire them, have been filed against the company in any of these cases."

Until Wednesday's moment of legal reckoning, though, it's difficult to quantify how scrupulously law-abiding the chicken purveyor has been. In the past, Pilgrim's has actively advocated for the use of migrant labor in the U.S. Now, those same migrants each face up to five years in the pen and fines of up to $250,000.

Flying the coop to their native land is, by now, a doubtful proposition. The U.S. citizens who are victims of the identity thefts tied to the case, says the Justice Department, have been unfairly denied access to medical and social services, and have suffered damage to their credit ratings.

Pilgrim's Pride, having confronted government scrutiny as to its hiring practices, will have to find other ways to cut costs as it faces inflating feed prices and a potential credit downgrade from Moody's.

Dumb-o-meter score: 91. Pilgrim's Pride will have to think twice the next time it considers hiring actual pilgrims.