MORGAN HILL — One of the top restaurants in Southern Santa Clara County is on the hook for $120,000 in penalties after the county uncovered a literal bait-and-switch scheme where the eatery passed off a bargain-basement fish as a much-pricier piscatorial offering.

Odeum, run by a chef with a Michelin pedigree, reached a settlement this week after a county investigation found the Mediterranean-inspired restaurant was swapping low-cost tilapia for petrale sole, which fetches two to three times as much money.

“When you go out to a restaurant, you should get the food you order and pay for,” Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Deng said. “The District Attorney and this county are committed to protecting the rights of consumers.”

According to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, the penalties levied on Odeum consisted of $90,000 in civil fines, $30,000 in restitution, and unspecified injunctive provisions. The restitution will be made in the form of $30 gift certificates offered to patrons who ordered petrale sole between October 2014 and March 2016.

That covers the time period in which the restaurant was accused of performing the illicit fish swap, after an investigation by the county Department of Health’s consumer protection division “discovered that Odeum was making the surreptitious seafood substitutions” that violated state health and safety codes prohibiting mis-branding and false advertising, prosecutors said.

Deng said a consumer complaint made to the District Attorney’s Office spurred the investigation. Messages left for Odeum management and ownership, led by renowned Chef Salvatore Calisi, were not immediately returned Wednesday.

Deng noted the pricing gap between the two fish is significant. A petrale sole dinner entreé at the restaurant is priced at $31.95 on the menu. There is no standalone tilapia offering, but at comparable area restaurants, such a dish is priced between $15 and $20.

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A Bay Area restaurateur told this newspaper he buys local petrale sole for $13 a pound and Dover sole for $17 a pound. By comparison, a typical restaurant price for getting tilapia is $4 to $5 a pound.

Other factors that may be behind such a swap is sustainability; sole is classified as overfished while tilapia is increasingly raised in farms. And most customers’ palettes are not discerning enough to detect the difference.

Seafood sourcing deception — ranging from mislabeling to outright fraud — is anything but rare in the grocery and restaurant industries. According to a 2013 study by the preeminent international conservation group Oceana that employed DNA testing, a third of over 1,200 commercial fish samples it analyzed from throughout the United States were mislabeled.

The settlement evokes memories of an infamous 2000 case at the defunct Bella Mia in downtown San Jose, where the restaurant paid $60,000 in penalties for substituting pork for veal and a chef was criminally charged, after a Mercury News investigation uncovered the practice.

Anyone who wants to report a similar case or other instance of consumer fraud can contact the District Attorney’s consumer mediation unit at 408-792-2880.

ODEUM CLAIM FORMS

Odeum patrons who ordered petrale sole between October 2014 and March 2016 can obtain a claim form for a $30 restaurant gift certificate by writing to Odeum at 17500 Depot St. Ste. 180, Morgan Hill, 95037. Claim forms will also run in The Mercury News, Morgan Hill Times, and Gilroy Dispatch. All claims must be submitted by May 31.

Staff writer Linda Zavoral contributed to this report.