A U.S. federal judge has put Biloxi, Mississippi, U.S.A.-based Mary Mahoney’s Old French House restaurant on probation and issued it a USD 149,000 (EUR 140,700) fine in a multi-year conspiracy, seafood misbranding, and wire fraud case.
Additionally, Mary Mahoney’s Co-Owner Anthony Cvitanovich was sentenced to four months of home confinement and three years probation and ordered to pay USD 10,000 (EUR 9,443) in the case, per the Biloxi Sun Herald.
Earlier this year, Cvitanovich pleaded guilty to federal charges and agreed to pay USD 1.35 million (EUR 1.3 million) in fines.
Mahoney’s admitted to selling frozen imported fish from Africa, India, and South America and advertising them as locally sourced premium species between December 2013 and November 2019. Cvitanovich admitted that between 2018 and 2019, he was involved in mislabeling approximately 17,190 pounds of fish sold at the restaurant.
“The scheme involved the fraudulent sale of fish by Mahoney’s and its wholesale supplier that was described on Mahoney’s menu as premium, higher-priced, local species, such as snapper and grouper from the Gulf of Mexico, when the fish was actually other species from abroad, including Lake Victoria perch from Africa, triple tail from Suriname, and unicorn filefish from India,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
That wholesale supplier to Mahoney’s was later identified as Biloxi, Mississippi-based Quality Poultry and Seafood (QPS), a distributor to casinos, restaurants, and grocery stores. In August, Quality agreed to pay USD 1 million (EUR 944,000) in forfeitures and a criminal fine of USD 150,000 (EUR 141,600) for its role in supplying Mary Mahoney’s with seafood.
QPS and its employees are scheduled for sentencing on 11 December.
Mary Mahoney’s is now placed under a five year probation that will force the restaurant to keep detailed records on the species it sells, as well as the sources and cost of its seafood, and make those records available on request from federal agencies, according to the Biloxi Sun Herald.
Cvitanovich apologized for the mislabeling scheme in court.
“I want to apologize to the court, my family, and our customers,” Cvitanovich told the judge.
The restaurant’s corporate representative Eileen Mahoney Ezell said Mahoney’s had faced many hardships during its 60 years in business, including Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 recession, the British Petroleum oil spill, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Still, like Cvitanovich, she also admitted the restaurant’s self-inflicted wrongdoings.
“We brought this one on ourselves,” she said, per the Biloxi Sun Herald.
