The owner of a long-established fish market in northeast Rochester has pleaded guilty to engaging in what one official called "truly breathtaking" $1.4 million food-stamp fraud schemes.

Irving Feldman, a 61-year-old Pittsford resident, pleaded guilty to food stamp fraud in U.S. District Court in Rochester on Friday. He faces a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to a news release from New York state and federal officials.

Feldman operates Upstate Fish, a market at 826 Joseph Ave. His father, Jack, a Holocaust survivor, opened the store under the name Jack's Modern Fish Market in 1954 and is a well-known figure in the community. A year ago, the elder Feldman was among a number of Holocaust survivors who had Hanukkah dinner with the Obamas and the president of Israel at the White House.

Irving Feldman was accused of two different schemes, one netting more than $1.2 million and the other more than $200,000.

The more lucrative scheme involved unlawfully buying $1,227,063 worth of food stamps from willing recipients for less than half their face value, according to the news release. The recipients received cash, and Feldman was able to reap a considerable profit by redeeming the food stamps with the federal government for their full value.

The gambit, known as trafficking, is hardly unique to Upstate Fish and its customers. A small percentage of food stamp recipients nationwide engage in the practice of trading benefits for cash that can be spent on things that food stamps don't cover — cigarettes or beer, for example, or more prosaic items such as soap, diapers, gasoline or toilet paper.

The $1.2 million in food-stamp purchases took place between January 2010 and October 2015, according to the news release from the New York Inspector General's Office. That office, along with Rochester police, Monroe County social services and the federal Agriculture and Homeland Security departments, collaborated to reel in Feldman.

“This fish market owner was caught running a food stamp fraud scheme that was truly breathtaking in scale,” state Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott said.

► Jack's Modern Fish and the 1964 riots

Feldman also admitted to a second scheme in which he induced food stamp recipients to use their benefit cards to buy fish from other retail markets, then sell the fish to him at steeply discounted prices. The recipients pocketed cash, and Feldman got inventory he could sell at full value.

The value of that scheme was about $202,000, the official statement said.

Feldman is to be sentenced March 14 by U.S. District Judge Frank Geraci Jr.

SORR@Gannett.com