Mississippi Seafood Distributor and Managers plead guilty to conspiracy and misbranding seafood to hoodwink buyers.
The case involves the largest seafood distributor in the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Quality Poultry and Seafood Inc. (QPS). The company has held its hands up and agreed to pay a substantial penalty.
“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,” said U.S. Attorney Todd W. Gee for the Southern District of Mississippi.
Fishy goings on at QPS investigated by FDA
The Justice Department report stated that between 2002 and 2019 QPS knowingly defrauded buyers in a “fish substitution scheme.” The company had allegedly “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.”
QPS was allegedly investigated by the FDA in the sale of mislabeled fish as part of a criminal search but continued the scheme despite the arm of the government being concerned in the company’s business practices.
It is also alleged that QPS continued to sell frozen fish imported from “Africa, South America and India for use as substitutes for local premium species.”
The fish market will cough up $1 million in forfeitures and a criminal fine of $150,000. QPS sales manager Todd A. Rosetti and business manager James W. Gunkel, also pleaded guilty to misbranding seafood.
“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,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
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