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The Portland-based Pacific Seafood Company is disputing a claim in a $2.25 million lawsuit that it falsified the weight of catches bought from shrimp boats, illegally pocketing between an additional $10-to-$20 million.
The lawsuit was filed in the Multnomah County Circuit Court by Justin Ottman, a former employee who said he discovered the falsified weight of catches on one of Pacific Seafood’s brands.
Documents Were Falsified Resulting in Millions of Dollars in Underpayments
According to the lawsuit, Ottman was sent by his company to the Texas Gulf Coast in April 2023 to investigate ‘issues’ at the Galveston Shrimp Company.
He then uncovered “a larger and more serious problem” – the company was giving its shrimp suppliers falsified documents, undercounting the weight of catches and claiming that the shrimp was of smaller grades, amounting to millions of dollars in underpayments.
Ottman’s lawsuit describes him as a whistleblower and states that he documented the underweight shrimp fraud in a 170-page report presented to top executives.
Ottman continued to request that the company correct the situation but was then demoted as the interim chief financial officer, forced to work remotely, and relinquished his desk to an intern before finally being fired in December 2023 when his position was “eliminated.”
In a statement, a Pacific Seafood company spokesman said that Ottman’s departure from the company was unrelated to the Galveston Shrimp Company investigation in which Ottman had played “a very limited role.”
Dismissing Ottman’s claim as a whistleblower, the statement says the former employee’s recollection “is both factually inaccurate and an inappropriate breach of the company’s attorney-client privilege.”
The statement notes that in February. Pacific Seafood filed a $3.2 million lawsuit alleging fraud that benefitted the former head of the Galveston Shrimp Company who, in turn, has disputed the claims and countersued.
The statement assures that Pacific Seafood is committed to ensuring accountability, and once its ongoing investigations of activities at the Galveston Shrimp Company are completed, and if shrimp suppliers (fishing partners) have been affected, “will be sure to do right by them.”
Takeaways
Pacific Seafood is based in Clackamas. It operates 41 facilities in 11 states and has more than 3,000 people on its payroll.
The company uses shrimp harvested from the Oregon Coast between April and October each year.
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