Foodservice Exec Cops To Tomato Racketeering

The founder and former chief executive of SK Foods, a California-based tomato processor, pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of racketeering and price fixing for bribing customers to inflate the prices of tomato goods and selling products with illegally high levels of mold.

Frederick Scott Salyer faces a sentence of four to seven years in prison as a result of his plea agreement, Businessweek reports.

Salyer was charged with bribing buyers from customers like Kraft Foods Inc., ConAgra Foods Inc., and Frito-Lay North America Inc. to ensure they bought his product, allowing SK Foods to sell their tomato products at a premium of 30 percent or more, according to Reuters.

He also falsified documents concerning mold count and production date, and tricked food manufacturers into buying mislabeled and substandard "organic" tomato paste, according to the Associated Press.

"Scott Salyer put greed ahead of concern for his employees and consumers worldwide," said the FBI's Herbert M. Brown at a news conference.

"Salyer and his co-conspirators manipulated prices on millions of pounds of processed tomatoes and improperly influenced supermarkets and big food companies into buying substandard tomato products put into brands found in almost every American home," Rick Goss, the assistant special agent in charge of the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigations unit, told the Associated Press. "Salyer and the defendants' scheme ripped off consumers and reaped big profits."