A Mississippi seafood restaurant duped diners hook, line and sinker by telling them the fish they were eating was fresh, when it was in fact imported frozen produce.

Despite the restaurant's location in Biloxi, the town home to a thriving commercial fishing industry, the only catch the owners made was from the delivery truck, as tons of frozen food were brought into the kitchens ready to be served up.

Restaurant-goers of Mary Mahoney's Old French House Restaurant, a Biloxi landmark since it opened in 1964, were none the wiser and never suspected anything fishy was going on behind closed doors.

Instead, they would take to social media and brag about the latest catch they'd enjoyed at the legendary venue, believing it to have come straight from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Federal prosecutors allege, and the restaurant has confessed, that it bought the seafood from an unidentified Biloxi local supplier and misrepresented it to unsuspecting customers, reeling them in.

The restaurant has now agreed to forfeit $1.35 million to the federal government after pleading guilty to one felony charge of conspiring to defraud customers through mislabeling seafood and wire fraud.

Co-owner Anthony 'Tony' Cvitanovich also pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to mislabel seafood.

From 2013 until November 2019, when federal agents raided the restaurant, Mahoney's purchased more than 29 tons of lake perch, tripletail, triggerfish and unicorn filefish from Africa, India or South America.

The fish were falsely sold as premium Gulf red snapper, snapper and redfish, according to the government's charges.

But it was more like red herring, than red snapper.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ers-years.html