A Mississippi seafood distributor, Quality Poultry and Seafood Inc. (QPS), and two corporate managers pleaded guilty to conspiring with others today. According to the Office of Public Affairs, they mislabeled seafood and committed wire fraud by marketing inexpensive and frozen imported substitutes as more expensive and premium local species.
QPS, 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. The two managers, Todd A. Rosetti and James W. Gunkel, also pleaded guilty to misbranding seafood to facilitate QPS’ fraud.
The company admitted to participating in its fish scheme from as early as 2002 and continued until Nov. 2019. The indictment alleges that 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. The company also labeled the cheap imports that it sold to customers at its retail shop and café as premium local fish.
Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resource Division stated, “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.”
The U.S. Attorney from the Southern District of Mississippi, Todd W. Gee, said, “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 also alleges that even after agents from the FDA executed a criminal search warrant at QPS to investigate its sale of mislabeled fish, the company continued for over a year to sell frozen fish imported from Africa, Southern America, and India for use as substitutes for local species.
The company managers Rosetti and Gunkel will be sentenced on Dec. 11, determined by a federal district court judge after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
