Something fishy
An iconic restaurant in Biloxi, Mississippi, made its name selling fresh local seafood. Turns out that for years it was all a fraud.
This article was produced in collaboration with the Gravy podcast from the Southern Foodways Alliance. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact info@thefern.org.
In May of 2024, the owners of Mary Mahoney’s, an institution in Biloxi, Mississippi, pleaded guilty to fraudulently selling more than 29 tons of fish between December 2013 and November 2019, claiming it was locally caught when in fact it was imported. The investigation found that at least 55,000 customers had purchased mislabeled fish. And that was just the beginning. Mahoney’s supplier, Quality Poultry and Seafood—another iconic Biloxi business—had sold mislabeled fish to other restaurants, too. Some of them knew about the scam, some did not. Eventually, both businesses had to forfeit more than a million dollars apiece.
In this episode of Gravy, a podcast from the Southern Foodways Alliance, reporter Boyce Upholt digs into a much bigger problem, one that extends well beyond the Gulf Coast: how for decades imported seafood has undercut local prices, effectively killing local fishing fleets in places like Biloxi, which for more than a century has claimed to be the “seafood capital of the world.” Upholt also found something else in Biloxi: A lot of Mary Mahoney’s customers didn’t care that they’d been duped.
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