Former Chief Financial Officer of Oceanic Enterprises, Jaime Cuadra has pleaded guilty to fraudulently embezzling more than one million dollars from Oceanic and its parent company, Unami Sustainable Seafood, a global leader in producing and supplying high quality bluefin tuna.
Unami, based in San Diego fishes and farms bluefin tuna to supply to the Japanese sushi and sashimi market, owning and operating Kali Tuna, a Croation-based aquaculture tuna farming operation, and Baji Aqua Farms, a Mexico-based operation for Pacific bluefin tuna in the Pacific Ocean off Baja California, Mexico.
The defendant, Jamie Cuadra pleaded guilty to misusing over one million dollars primarily to fund a fledging professional football league, and in a plea agreement said that he embezzled the money from 2010 until his termination from Oceanic in February, when he also resigned as president and CEO of the United States football league.
Cuadra said he hid the embezzlement partially by coding illicit transfers as legitimate business expenses. He also admitted to filing false tax returns during a three-year period, amounting to nearly $390,000 in unpaid taxes. As part of his plea, he must repay the embezzled funds and the unpaid taxes.
FBI Special Agent, Daphne Hearn said in a statement: “At its most basic level, this case is about greed and abuse of trust.â€
According to the plea, Cuadra faces a prison term of 22 years when he is sentenced September 23.
