The former sales manager of the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s largest seafood distributor is believed to be the catalyst of a conspiracy to misbrand imported seafood as locally caught species.
Quality Poultry and Seafood Inc. (QPS) was sentenced to five years of probation on Wednesday and ordered to pay the United States $1 million in forfeitures and a $500,000 criminal fine in connection with a scheme that led to popular Biloxi eatery Mary Mahoney’s Old French House being caught red-handed for falsely advertising many of their seafood products for nearly six years.
The food distributor’s sales manager, Todd Rosetti, and business manager, James Gunkel, were also sentenced for their role in the wire fraud.
Rosetti, who is accused of setting this spiral of crime in motion, was ordered to serve eight months in prison followed by 180 days of home detention, one year of supervised release, and 100 hours of community service. Gunkel was sentenced to two years of probation, one year of home detention, and 50 hours of community service.
QPS was ordered to maintain thorough records describing the species, sources, and cost of the seafood it acquires for sale to its customers for the next five years. These records must be made available to any federal, state, or local governmental authority that regulates or monitors the service and distribution of food for human consumption. The judge also ordered QPS to be transparent when responding to inquiries regarding the species, source, and cost of any seafood it prepares, serves, sells, or advertises for sale.
“U.S. consumers expect their seafood to be correctly identified. When sellers purposefully substitute one fish species for another, they deceive consumers and cause potential food safety hazards to be overlooked or misidentified by processors or end users,” Acting Special Agent in Charge Kerry Mannion, FDA Office of Criminal Investigations Miami Field Office, said. “We will continue to investigate and bring to justice those who put profits above public health.”
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In August 2024, QPS pled guilty to participating in a fish substitution scheme from as early as 2002 and continuing through November 2019. The company recommended and sold foreign-sourced fish that its customers could serve as convincing substitutes for the local “Gulf” species the restaurants advertised on their menus.
QPS also labeled the cheap imports that it sold to customers at its own retail shop and café as premium local fish. According to court documents, even after agents from the FDA executed a criminal search warrant at QPS to investigate its sale of mislabeled fish, the wholesaler continued to misbrand frozen fish imported from Africa, South America, and India for more than a year.
Leadership with Mary Mahoney’s, which received its seafood from QPS, admitted that between December 2013 and November 2019, it fraudulently sold premium more than 29 tons of fish that were not the species identified on its menu.
The Food and Drug Administration – Office of Criminal Investigations investigated the case in conjunction with the Mississippi Marine Patrol, a Division of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea C. Jones and Senior Trial Attorney Jeremy F. Korzenik of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division prosecuted the case.
