A Mississippi Gulf Coast seafood distributor and two company managers have owned up to conducting fishy business with their product.
Biloxi-based Quality Poultry & Seafood Inc. (QPS) pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to mislabel seafood and to commit wire fraud by marketing inexpensive and frozen imported substitutes as more expensive and premium local species.
QPS, the largest seafood wholesaler on the Gulf Coast agreed to pay the United States $1 million in forfeitures and a criminal fine of $150,000. The company’s sales manager, Todd Rosetti, and business manager, James Gunkel, also pleaded guilty to misbranding seafood to facilitate QPS’ fraud.
According to the Department of Justice, the Gulf Coast business admitted to participating in this fish substitution scheme from as early as 2002 and continuing through November 2019. An indictment alleges that QPS recommended and sold foreign-sourced fish that could serve as convincing substitutes for the local species the restaurants advertised on their menus. QPS also labeled the cheap imports it sold to customers at its retail shop and café as premium local fish.
“When imported substitutes are marketed as local domestic seafood, it depresses the value of authentic Gulf Coast seafood, which means that honest local fishermen and wholesalers have a harder time making a profit,” said U.S. Attorney Todd W. Gee for the Southern District of Mississippi. “This kind of mislabeling fraud hurts the overall local seafood market and rips off restaurant customers who were paying extra to eat a premium local product. These convictions should serve as a warning: restaurants and wholesalers will face criminal prosecution if they are not honest with customers about what they are actually buying.”
The indictment against QPS alleges that even after agents from the Food and Drug Administration executed a criminal search warrant at the company to investigate its sale of mislabeled fish, QPS continued for over a year to sell frozen fish imported from Africa, South America, and India for use as substitutes for local premium species.
Mary Mahoney’s Old French House, which pleaded guilty in May, admitted that between December 2013 and November 2019, it fraudulently mislabeled and sold approximately 58,750 pounds of fish that were not the species identified on its menu. QPS supplied seafood to Mary Mahoney’s and many other restaurants and retailers.
QPS, Rosetti, and Gunkel will be sentenced on December 11. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations is investigating the case. Senior Trial Attorney Jeremy Korzenik of the Environment and Natural Resources Division’s Environmental Crimes Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Jones for the Southern District of Mississippi are prosecuting the case.
