September 21, 2018 — Another former National Fish & Seafood executive is on his way to federal prison. But not for anything he did while director of sales at National Fish.
James R. Faro, 62, who worked at Gloucester-based National Fish from 2012 until approximately January, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to two years in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.21 million in restitution.
Faro was convicted of conspiring to commit bank fraud at Marlborough-based Sea Star Seafood Corp., the frozen seafood distributor he founded in 1983.
As part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Faro admitted that he and John Crowley, the chief financial officer at Sea Star, conspired to defraud the Commerce Bank & Trust Company of Worcester by lying about the value of Sea Star’s outstanding accounts receivable to increase its borrowing limits.
Jack Ventola, the founder and president of National Fish, currently is serving a two-year sentence at the minimum-security Federal Medical Center, Devens in central Massachusetts after pleading guilty to failure to pay taxes on $2.9 million he “fraudulently diverted” from National Fish’s majority owners.
Ventola also was ordered to pay $1.07 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.
Ventola admitted to conspiring with two other National Fish executives — senior sales executive Richard J. Pandolfo and an unnamed head of operations — and National Fish accountant and director Michael Bruno to defraud the IRS and Pacific Andes in a scheme involving a temporary labor company.