Do you know what kind of seafood you are buying?

Phoenix-based company labeled Vietnamese catfish as grouper, says indictment

A federal grand jury in Mobile has accused executives of a Phoenix seafood supplier of passing off Vietnamese catfish as more-expensive fish to customers throughout south Alabama and northwest Florida.

The 28-count indictment names three defendants: Karen L. Blyth, president and treasurer of CSE Inc. and president and chief executive officer of RF Inc.; David H. Phelps, vice president of those two companies; and John J. Popa, a Pensacola resident who serves as vice president of RF Inc.

Phoenix-based CSE imported seafood under the name Clear Seas, while Pensacola-based RF Inc. was a distributor that sold the seafood to customers in the Pensacola and Mobile areas.

The defendants could not be reached for comment Friday. They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the most serious offenses.

According to the indictment, Blyth, Phelps and Popa conspired to falsely label, smuggle and misbrand more than 325,000 pounds of seafood to avoid tariffs imposed by the U.S. Commerce Department on Vietnamese-raised basa, swai and sutchi catfish from January 2004 to November 2006.

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Low-cost competition has been a big issue along the Gulf Coast, particularly among shrimpers in and near Bayou La Batre. Joey Rodriguez, a boat-builder and past president of the Southern Seafood Alliance, welcomed the prosecution.

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Development, Hooters of America "I think a lot of that is going on," he said. "I think it's going on across the country. ... It's all about money." The Commerce Department imposed a 63.88 percent tariff on certain frozen fish fillets from Vietnam after determining that they were being sold in the United States below fair market value. The indictment alleges that the CSE and RF used a variety of schemes to avoid paying those duties and also to defraud customers by passing off cheaper seafood for more-expensive products. In addition to putting cheaper fish like Vietnamese basa in boxes labeled grouper, snapper or sole, the defendants are accused of defrauding customers in other ways. This includes changing the tags and labels on oysters purchased in Alabama in order to make them appear to have more recent harvest dates. They also are accused of passing off farm-raised and foreign shrimp as wild shrimp caught in the United States, along with claming to sell fresh fish that actually was frozen fish that had been thawed, trimmed and washed in a bleach solution.

©2013 National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF). All rights reserved. ServSafe is a registered trademark of the NRAEF, used under license by National Restaurant Association Solutions, LLC. Flexible Training and testing is available online or on-site to accommodate your scheduling requirements. Reliable From neighborhood pubs to national chains, ServSafe programs provide expert training to help ensure your peace of mind. Trusted Built by the same creators as the highly regarded ServSafe food safety program, protecting you for nearly 40 years. The indictment describes doubts expressed by RF employees about the company's practices. From about January to June in 2005, for instance, Phelps allegedly helped an employee re-box shrimp. The worker, according to the indictment, told Phelps that he was unhappy that he had been told to repackage and falsely label the shrimp. He later expressed his concerns to Blyth, according to the indictment.