GULFPORT, Miss. — A restaurant on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, along with its co-owner, received sentences on Monday for federal offenses related to the mislabeling of inexpensive imported seafood as high-quality local fish.
Mary Mahoney’s Old French House, a well-established Biloxi restaurant dating back to 1962, was sentenced to five years of probation and mandated to pay nearly $1.5 million in penalties. This total comprises a criminal fine of $149,000 and $1.35 million in forfeiture linked to revenues from the illicit seafood sales, according to the Justice Department.
Co-owner and manager Anthony Charles Cvitanovich, 55, was given a sentence of three years probation along with four months of home confinement. He was also fined $10,000. Cvitanovich had pleaded guilty on May 30 to a felony charge of misbranding seafood, specifically regarding actions taken during 2018 and 2019.
U.S. Attorney Todd Gee expressed concern in a Monday news release, stating that misrepresenting foreign seafood as premium local varieties not only harms the Gulf Coast seafood industry but also deceives customers who expect fresh, authentic local offerings.
The restaurant’s guilty plea on May 30 was related to charges of conspiracy to misbrand seafood and wire fraud. Prosecutors indicated that the deceptive practices may have started as early as 2002 and persisted until November 2019.
During the period from December 2013 to November 2019, the restaurant confessed to collaborating with co-conspirators at a Biloxi seafood wholesaler to fraudulently sell around 58,750 pounds (approximately 26,649 kilograms) of frozen seafood imported from Africa, India, and South America as if it were local premium species.
As part of the court’s ruling, the restaurant is required to keep detailed records for at least five years regarding the species, sources, and costs of seafood it sells, making these records accessible to federal, state, or local authorities as needed.
In a related development, a seafood distributor based on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, along with two of its managers, entered guilty pleas on August 27 for conspiring to mislabel seafood and commit wire fraud. They had been selling frozen imported fish under the guise of more expensive local species.
Quality Poultry and Seafood Inc. has agreed to forfeit $1 million and pay a fine of $150,000. The distributor’s sales manager, Todd A. Rosetti, and business manager, James W. Gunkel, both from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, have also pleaded guilty to misbranding charges.
The sentencing for Quality Poultry and Seafood, along with Rosetti and Gunkel, is scheduled for December 11.
