Mississippi Seafood Distributor and Managers Sentenced for Conspiracy and Misbranding Seafood

Gulfport, MS - A Mississippi seafood distributor and two company managers were sentenced for 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.

Quality Poultry and Seafood Inc. (QPS), the largest seafood wholesaler on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, was sentenced to 5 years of probation and ordered to pay the United States $1 million in forfeitures and a $500,000 criminal fine. The Court also ordered that QPS maintain for five years records describing the species, sources, and cost of the seafood it acquires for sale to its customers; that QPS must make these records available to any federal, state, or local governmental authority that regulates or monitors the service and distribution of food for human consumption and to any such agency that regulates the harvesting, storage, labeling, or sale of seafood; and that QPS shall answer truthfully any inquiry from any governmental agency and from any customer as to the species, source, and cost of any seafood it prepares, serves, sells, or advertises for sale.

QPS sales manager Todd A. Rosetti and business manager James W. Gunkel, both of Ocean Springs, were also sentenced today for misbranding seafood to facilitate QPS' fraud. Rosetti was ordered to serve 8 months in prison followed by 180 days of home detention, one year of supervised release, and 100 hours of community service. Gunkel was sentenced to 2 years of probation, 12 months of home detention and 50 hours of community service.

"This large-scale scheme to misbrand imported seafood as local Gulf Coast seafood hurt local fishermen and consumers," said U.S. Attorney Todd Gee of the Southern District of Mississippi. "These criminal convictions should put restaurants and wholesalers on notice that they must be honest with customers about what is actually being sold."

"U.S. consumers expect their seafood to be correctly identified. When sellers purposefully substitute one fish species for another, they deceive consumers and cause potential food safety hazards to be overlooked or misidentified by processors or end users," said Acting Special Agent in Charge Kerry Mannion, FDA Office of Criminal Investigations Miami Field Office. "We will continue to investigate and bring to justice those who put profits above public health."

In August 2024, QPS pled guilty to participating in a fish substitution scheme from as early as 2002 and continuing through November 2019. 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. According to court documents, 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 and was sentenced in November, admitted that 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 restaurants and retailers.

The Food and Drug Administration - Office of Criminal Investigations investigated the case in conjunction with the Mississippi Marine Patrol, a Division of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea C. Jones and Senior Trial Attorney Jeremy F. Korzenik of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division prosecuted the case.