IRREVERENT News

LONDON - Candy magnate Willy Wonka was indicted today on 381 counts of fraud, price fixing, and collusion during Easter candy sales.

The notoriously eccentric candy maker Willy Wonka, who gained worldwide fame for his numerous confectionery innovations, was indicted today in Crown Court for masterminding a wide-ranging conspiracy to fix candy prices around this year's Easter holiday. In often bizarre testimony by fellow candy makers, Wonka was portrayed as an "eccentrically evil genius" who used intimidation, bribery and sometimes violence to coerce local candy shops to drastically raise prices on many of his best selling candies.

"Belying this iconic candy-man's rather goofy exterior," said prosecutor James Barish, "is a man of extraordinary cunning with a mafioso business sensibility... who would stop at nothing to get what he wants."

Wonka's barrister, Sir John Gilles, meanwhile, represented a "harmless man-child... caught up in a whirlwind, fueled by the bitter jealousy of his competitors, who seek nothing but the candy-man's utter destruction to preserve their own dwindling profits."

The judge, however, wasn't persuaded to the wacky Wonka's innocence.  "Insofar as it concerns the criminal charges against him," Judge William Smith II said at Wonka's hearing, "one cannot overlook the massive amounts of evidence supporting these charges.  I have no reasonable alternative but to remand the defendant, Willy Wonka, for sentencing."

Wonka is expected to continue to insist the charges be dropped, and if found guilty, appeal the decision.  Meanwhile the once reclusive candy-man remains in the custody of London police.  Sales of the famous "Wonka Bar," however, at their newly reduced price, surged to record levels going into Easter weekend.