Weekly Highlights - November 29, 2019

Northeast

• Two OLE personnel attended the sentencing of Lou’s Fish Market and owner Mark Parente.  Parente was sentenced to six months home confinement and five years’ probation and must surrender his federal and New York state dealer permits. Parente also received a fine of $50,000, a community service payment of $10,000 and restitution of $481,000. Lou’s Fish Market was sentenced to three years’ probation and has to undergo an environmental compliance auditing plan. Lou’s received a fine of $400,000 and must make a community service payment of $100,000.  Monetary penalties for Parente/Lou’s totaled $1,041,000.  This sentencing was the last matter directly involving the Research Set-Aside investigation, which began with a vessel inspection in Point Lookout, New York on July 23, 2010.

• Two New York corporations and their owners pleaded guilty today in federal court for their scheme to falsely-label seafood that they later sold nationwide.  In a plea agreement with the government, Roy Tuccillo Sr, 59, and his son, Roy Tuccillo Jr, 32, both of Jericho, New York, and two of their Westbury, New York, food processing and distribution companies, Anchor Frozen Foods Inc, and Advanced Frozen Foods Inc., pleaded to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They admitted to importing giant squid from Peru, marketing it as octopus, and using e-mail and wire transactions to sell it to grocery stores in interstate commerce.