United States v. Quality Poultry and Seafood, et al.,

On August 27, 2024, Quality Poultry and Seafood (QPS), sales manager Todd Anthoney Rosetti, and business manager James William Gunkel, pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the sale of mislabeled seafood. Sentencing is scheduled for December 11, 2024.

QPS sells poultry and seafood to a few hundred Mississippi-area restaurants, casinos, and grocery stores, and operates its own retail market and cafe. It is the largest seafood distributor on the Mississippi Gulf coast. From 2002 through 2019, QPS sold to its retail customers mislabeled seafood and sold to its wholesale customers fish that QPS either fraudulently mislabeled or offered to restaurants as convincing substitutes for the preferred local species that the restaurants advertised, identified in their menus, and charged their customers for serving. For more than a year following the execution of a search warrant, QPS continued to sell frozen fish imported from Africa, South America and India for use as substitutes for local premium species.

QPS pleaded guilty to conspiring to misbrand food with the intent to defraud and for the use of interstate wire transmissions to facilitate the sale of misbranded fish (18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1343; 21 U.S.C. §§ 331(k), 333(a)(2)). QPS Sales Manager Todd Anthony Rosetti, and Business Manager James William Gunkel pleaded guilty to seafood misbranding (21 U.S.C. §§ 331(k), 343(a), (b), 333(a)(1)).

Co-defendant’s Mary Mahoney's Old French House restaurant (Mahoney's) and co-owner Charles Cvitanovich previously pleaded guilty for their involvement in the scheme. Mahoney’s pleaded guilty to conspiracy to misbrand seafood and wire fraud. Cvitanovich pleaded guilty to misbranding seafood (18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1343; 21 U.S.C. §§ 331(k), 333(a)(2)). Mahoney’s and Cvitanovich are scheduled for sentencing on November 18, 2024.

Between December 2013 and November 2019, Mahoney and co-conspirators fraudulently sold approximately 58,750 pounds (more than 29 tons) of fish that was frozen and imported from Africa, India, and South America as local premium species. Between 2018 and 2019, Cvitanovich mislabeled approximately 17,190 pounds of fish sold at the restaurant. QPS supplied seafood to Mahoney’s and many other restaurants and retailers.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations conducted the investigation.