Here’s what alerted investigators to seafood conspiracy between iconic Mississippi brands
When two prominent Biloxi businesses were caught conspiring to substitute cheaper foreign fish for Gulf seafood, they put other local restaurants and casinos “under a cloud of suspicion,” U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden said during a hearing Wednesday.
Quality Poultry & Seafood, a wholesaler and retailer, and Mary Mahoney’s Old French House restaurant conspired to mislabel seafood from no later than December 2013 until November 2019.
Quality sales manager Todd Rosetti substituted the foreign fish for premium Gulf snapper without detection. Evidence indicates the mislabeling started as early as 1999.
He overrode employees who objected, Ozerden said as he reviewed the factors he considered before sentencing Rosetti to eight months in prison, followed by 180 days under house arrest. Ozerden also for the first time publicly revealed the investigation’s origins.
Inspectors from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources were inspecting Quality when one of them noticed a box of fish that had a label from the South American country of Suriname. A subsequent tip revealed that Quality was mislabeling fish from Suriname and other countries as Gulf fresh seafood.
The agency alerted the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. The DMR regularly inspects wholesalers, retailers and processors statewide for compliance with state laws and regulations on handling, shipping, sales and processing of seafood.
FDA investigates seafood mislabeling
USDA Special Agent Martin T. Holloway was assigned to the case and started his investigation in 2017. In September 2018, federal agents raided Quality. Even so, Quality continued mislabeling seafood. Ozerden noted 93 sales of mislabeled seafood to Mahoney’s after the raid.
FDA agents raided Mahoney’s in November 2019. That’s when the conspiracy ended. Evidence presented in court indicates Mahoney’s co-owner Anthony “Tony” Cvitanovich immediately admitted what the restaurant had been doing and cooperated with investigators, while Rosetti initially denied being involved. Cvitanocich, sentenced in November, will serve four months under house arrest.
The Mahoney’s raid was widely reported. The purpose of the raid became clear to the public when the case against Mahoney’s was unsealed in May and drew national headlines.
While Mahoney’s knew about the labeling, Ozerden said many of the 200 to 300 Quality customers were unaware of the substitutions, including retail customers, casinos and restaurants.
Quality profited while victimizing the deceived customers, the judge said. Restaurants and casinos, he said, are under “a cloud of suspicion as to who knew what when,” the judge said. “For most of them, that cloud of suspicion was unfair.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: The country of Suriname is in South America. An earlier version of this story misstated its location.
