Merage family

The Merage family is a wealthy Iranian Jewish family residing in Orange County, California. In 2004 the Merage Jewish Community Center opened in Irvine, California; the center was named after the Merage Family and serves the needs of Orange County.
David and Paul Merage co-founded Chef America Inc. where they created the popular microwavable snack Hot Pockets in the early 1980s. The brothers later sold the Chef America Inc. company to Nestlé for $2.6 billion. Hot Pockets were manufactured in Englewood, Colorado, Chef America's former headquarters, until moving its business to the rest of Nestlé's frozen business in Solon, Ohio.
Paul Merage's daughter Michelle Janavs, a food executive who was at one point regarded as the Hot Pockets "heiress," was later implicated in the notorious 2019 [college admissions scandal|Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal] and later sentenced in February 2020 to five months in prison after pleading guilty to paying Rick Singer $100,000 to fix ACT scores for her two daughters so they could be admitted into the University of [Southern California].