A federal jury has ordered Quality Poultry and Seafood to pay $1.5 million in forfeitures and criminal fines after being convicted of mislabelling food and falsifying storage information. The company is owned by Todd Rosetti and James Gunkel of Ocean Springs, Miss. Photo credit: Quality Poultry and Seafood, Facebook.
Previously, Anthony Charles Cvitanovich, co-owner and manager, and his restaurant Mary Mahoney’s Old French House, located in Biloxi, Mississippi, were sentenced for their participation in a conspiracy to misbrand seafood by replacing local-caught premium species with cheaper imported fish while selling them as a premium fish on their menus.
During that time, Mary Mahoney’s, which was founded in 1962, fraudulently sold at least 58,750 pounds of fish as fresh and locally caught when it was instead frozen and imported from Africa, India and South America.
Prosecutors say QPS was a willing part of that conspiracy and sold the inferior seafood to Mary Mahoney’s. This Biloxi-based restaurant and QPS started the practice in 2013, and it continued until at least November 2019, according to a Justice Department press release.
Both parties reached the plea agreement in which a federal court ordered Mary Mahoney’s to pay a total penalty of $1,499,000. That included a $149,000 criminal fine and $1,350,000 in forfeiture of money they profited from the fake fish.
The court sentenced Mary Mahoney’s to a five-year probation, with an additional order to maintain better records of the types and the sourcing of the seafood it sells.
For their part in the conspiracy, a federal court ordered QPS to pay $1 million in forfeitures and an additional $500,000 criminal fine, along with a similar court mandate of keeping better records.
QPS previously pled guilty to participating in a fish substitution scheme starting back in 2002 up until November 2019, according to a plea agreement obtained by The Daily Muck.
Rosetti, who served as a sales manager, and Gunkel, a business manager at QPS, were also sentenced. Rosetti will serve eight months in prison with an additional 180 days of home detention, one year of supervised release and 100 hours of community service. Gunkel will serve 2 years of probation, 12 months of home detention and 50 hours of community service.
Cvitanovich, 55, was sentenced to three years of probation along with four months of home detention while also having to pay a 10,000 fine.
In a press release, U.S. Attorney Todd Gee of the Southern District of Mississippi said, “This scheme hurt local fishermen.”
“These criminal convictions should put restaurants and wholesalers on notice that they must be honest with customers about what is actually being sold,” Gee also said.
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