A seafood distributor in Mississippi has been fined $1.1 million after bosses admitted using cheap alternatives and labeling them as premium.
Quality Poultry and Seafood Inc (QPS), which is the largest seafood wholesaler on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, has agreed to pay the United States $1 million in forfeitures and a criminal fine of $150,000.
Sales manager Todd A. Rosetti and business manager James W. Gunkel, both of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, also pleaded guilty to misbranding seafood to facilitate QPS’ fraud.
Fish substitution
QPS admitted to participating in a fish substitution scheme dating back as far as 2022 and continuing through November 2019.
The indictment alleges QPS recommended and sold to its restaurant customers 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 that it sold to customers at its own retail shop and café as premium local fish.
Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said:
“QPS and company officials went to great lengths in conspiring with others to perpetuate fraud for more than a decade, even after they knew they were under federal investigation.“
"Mislabeling seafood harms local wholesalers and fishermen who compete to sell locally sourced, premium fish in a market unfairly flooded with less expensive fish, frozen and imported from overseas.”
US Attorney Todd W. Gee for the Southern District of Mississippi added:
“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."
“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 alleges even after agents from the FDA executed a criminal search warrant at QPS 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, which pleaded guilty in May, admitted between December 2013 and November 2019, it fraudulently sold, as local premium species, approximately 58,750 pounds (over 29 tons) of fish that was not the species identified on its menu.
QPS supplied seafood to Mary Mahoney’s and many other restaurant restaurants and retailers.
QPS, Rosetti and Gunkel will be sentenced on Dec. 11.
A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
