Car-Smog Tester Pleads Guilty to Falsifying Reports to EPA

The president of an Orange County laboratory that performed emissions tests on imported luxury cars pleaded guilty Friday to submitting false test results to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Andrew Krumm of Garden Grove, president of Import Certification Lab Inc., pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements to a government agency, prosecutor Ralph Hirschmann said.

Krumm faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine when sentenced Oct. 19 by U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima. His firm, which pleaded guilty to five counts of false statements, could be fined $2.5 million, Hirschmann added.

In entering the guilty pleas, Krumm admitted signing the bogus test-report forms and said he was aware of a “program of submission of false documents” by ICL employees, Hirschmann said.

Krumm was one of 25 people indicted in March on allegations of submitting false emission test results to the EPA. Named along with the 25 individuals were ICL and a subsidiary, Import Automotive Technology, known as Autotech, both located in the city of Orange.

Hirschmann said Autotech and its president, Dennis Holding of Los Angeles, would be dismissed from the case. All but two of the other individuals have pleaded guilty and the remaining two face trial this fall.

ICN performed emissions tests on so-called “gray-market” cars, usually luxury, imported vehicles that lack the pollution-control equipment required by federal law. Autotech installed the equipment in the cars.

Hirschmann said customers were charged $2,000 to $7,500 to have the tests performed and have the necessary equipment installed. The indictment said the firms cheated on exhaust emissions tests, falsified and fabricated results and submitted that data to the EPA.

Between 1983 and 1986, ICN submitted 7,900 sets of results to the EPA, falsely representing that the tests had been properly performed and that the cars passed the emissions tests, Hirschmann said.