Seafood Seller Pleads Guilty to Fraudulently Selling Imported Fish
Mississippi seafoods wholesaler Quality Poultry and Seafood Inc. and two of its managers pleaded guilty on Aug. 27 to conspiring to mislabel frozen imported goods as their more expensive and premium local counterparts, DOJ announced. The company agreed to pay $1 million in forfeitures and a $150,000 criminal fine, while sales manager Todd Rosetti and business manager James Gunkel copped to "misbranding seafood to facilitate" the company's fraud, DOJ said.
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The scheme ran from 2002 to 2019 and saw the company sell to restaurants "foreign-sourced fish that could serve as convincing substitutes for the local species the restaurants advertised on their menus." The fish was imported from Africa, South America and India. DOJ said Quality Poultry and Seafood continued operating a scheme for an entire year after Food and Drug Administration agents "executed a criminal search warrant" to investigate the company's practices.
DOJ noted that Mississippi restaurant Mary Mahoney's pleaded guilty in May to fraudulently selling imported fish and that Quality Poultry and Seafood was a supplier of Mary Mahoney's.