Man sentenced to 28 months for stealing gourmet mushrooms

Published: Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 8:15 AM
By Jason Grant/The Star-Ledger

A Union man was sentenced to 28 months in prison for stealing mushrooms from a Newark food distributor.
NEWARK ? It was the case of the disappearing delicacies ? the Morels and the Chanterelles, prized gourmet mushrooms.

In December 2007, Gino Silva was an inventory control manager for a gourmet mushroom distributor in Newark. It was then, federal authorities say, that he devised his latest criminal plan ? a delicious fraud that involved the starting of a secret competitor company in the world of fine-dining mushrooms; the inflation of purchase orders at the gourmet-distributor company in Newark; and the pilfering of those scrumptious mushrooms.

Indeed, authorities say, Silva was already awaiting sentencing in a $1.2 million embezzlement scheme that he had helped run years before at an electronics company, Philips. But that didn?t stop Silva ? who was sentenced Monday in federal court to 28 months in prison for stealing thousands of dollars worth of mushrooms ? from brazenly starting in on the food crime, authorities added.

According to authorities, Silva and Steven Perei, 45, of Jersey City, secretly began a rival company to take on D?Artagnan, a mushroom distributor and gourmet-foods house where they both worked. Naming their outfit Mediterra, they apparently encountered a lack of delicacies like Morels and Chanterelles, said Jay V. Surgent, Silva?s defense attorney, Monday.

Silva soon began stealing the mushrooms and other products from D?Artagnan, ultimately using the goods to fill Mediterra?s orders, authorities say. The scheme ran for about a year, Surgent said, from June 2008 to June 2009. And as an inventory control manager at D?Artagnan, authorities say, Silva even instructed an employee there to inflate the company?s purchase orders and avoid entering information of certain product-deliveries, all in a bid to conceal his thievery.
Meanwhile, said U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman Monday, Perei and Silva, now 44, were making sales on behalf of Mediterra without having the inventory needed on hand. And Silva, of Union, was using D?Artagnan?s refrigerators to store certain Mediterra products.

"He?s expressed extreme remorse and he?s very sorry for his conduct," Surgent said Monday after the sentencing hearing in Newark before U.S. District Dennis M. Cavanaugh, calling his client?s crime "out of character." "He told the judge today, there was just no excuse for his conduct. He?s very sorry, he apologized to everyone."

In addition to the prison time Silva got for a charge of interstate theft of property, he was also ordered Monday to pay $71,179 in restitution ? an amount that Surgent said he believes represents the value of the stolen shrooms, which he said included Morels and Chanterelles.

"A very small amount of mushrooms can be worth hundreds of dollars," he said.

Surgent also said Silva, who he said is married with children, "had suffered from emotional trauma in his life." He noted that his client is a smart man, who speaks three languages and who graduated with an M.B.A. from Kean University in 2009.

According to Fishman?s office, Silva was working in New Jersey from 2000 to 2005 as a vice president in charge of operations at Philips Accessories and Computer Peripherals, Inc., when he and others tricked Philips into paying a temporary-staffing agency for the services of fake employees. The perpetrators routed the fraudulent paychecks to bank accounts they controlled, authorities said.

Silva pleaded guilty in December 2008 to that crime, and was ultimately sentenced to 27 months in prison. He was also ordered to pay $843,414 in restitution, authorities said.

Perei pleaded guilty in April last year to one county of selling and receiving stolen goods and was later sentenced to two years probation by Judge Cavanaugh.
Surgent added Monday that Judge Cavanaugh was "very concerned" with the fact that Silva had committed the mushroom theft while being monitored while waiting for sentencing for a previous crime.