SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Ricardo Rudin Mathieu ran a racket. He put labels bearing the U.S. Department of Agriculture's organic seal on boxes of pineapples grown conventionally.
Before Rudin was caught, he managed to export more than 400,000 of the phony organics to the United States and Canada — enough to supply a pineapple to every resident of New Orleans.
Rudin confessed in 2014, USDA records show. Then something remarkable happened. The agency did nothing to him.
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