3 Guilty of Rigging Superfund Toxic Tests : Pollution: Former employees of La Jolla lab gave false assurances that equipment used in more than 1,000 tests was accurate.

Three former employees of a La Jolla laboratory pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges that they falsified testing of soil samples from Superfund toxic waste sites, taking shortcuts that authorities say may have hindered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to judge which sites needed the most attention.

U.S. Atty. William Braniff said the defendants admitted that, as employees of Science Applications International Corp.’s Environmental Chemistry Laboratory in La Jolla, they often provided false assurances that testing equipment had been calibrated to ensure accuracy. In addition, he said, because the lab was paid more if it met EPA deadlines, the employees backdated some results, overcharging the U.S. government about $100,000.

The charges were based on a 28-month inquiry that focused on about 1,000 test samples gathered nationwide in late 1987 and early 1988, Braniff said.

Braniff’s announcement came less than one week after employees of a Missouri-based corporation pleaded guilty to similar charges, and Brooks Griffin, a regional director of the EPA Inspector General’s office, said 20 other investigations of falsified results are under way throughout the country.

“This is the second case to reach this point,” Griffin said. “But there will be many others to come.”

Authorities said the SAIC laboratory’s former manager, Gary Smith, pleaded guilty in federal District Court to aiding and abetting the making of false statements to the EPA, a felony. The 42-year-old Encinitas man, who is scheduled to be sentenced in February, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Two technicians under Smith’s supervision, Celso de Oliveira and Larry Flynn of San Diego, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the conversion of government money--when they backdated test results for profit--a misdemeanor. Oliveira, 35, and Flynn, 39, were each sentenced to two years of unsupervised probation.

Braniff said no decision has been made about whether to charge SAIC, a Virginia-based company that does extensive work for the U.S. government. The company, whose La Jolla labs had tested samples for the EPA since 1984, brought the fraud to the attention of law enforcement authorities, he said, after it conducted its own internal investigation.

SAIC has pledged to sell or close the lab, according to Griffin, and the EPA is no longer sending samples to SAIC.

Braniff said that, during 1987 and 1988, all the laboratory’s employees were involved in the scam--about 25 total. He said some had been granted immunity and refused to say whether any more employees would be charged.

Griffin said that, after the criminal case is resolved, the EPA will file a civil suit seeking to recover triple the damages that it incurred as a result of the SAIC wrongdoing.

But more than money, Braniff said, “the real concern is the harm that these faulty (test) results can lead to. . . . Actions of this kind put us all at risk.”

FBI Agent Joseph C. Johnson, who participated in the inquiry, agreed.

“The allocation of money to the cleanup of Superfund sites can vary from several millions to several billions of dollars, and the commitment of these funds is dependent on accurate, honest test results,” he said. “The health and safety of our citizens are at stake.”

The tests conducted by the La Jolla lab were the basis for establishing priorities among sites so that the most dangerous sites are cleaned up first; for determining the amount and identity of the toxic chemicals and for identifying the parties responsible from which to seek reimbursement or the cleanup costs.

Although the improper testing may have hindered the EPA’s ability to judge the relative severity of different clean-up sites, officials said they were still evaluating whether there was a consistent pattern of under- or over-estimating the toxicity of the samples.

Griffin said that, despite the apparent broad scope of the fraud, he believes the public can have confidence in the Superfund program.

“As soon as we discovered this problem, the attempts to overcome the errors commenced immediately,” he said. “There are many systems the agency has to protect itself.”

Braniff said that those systems cannot be faulted because of the unlawful behavior of contractors. “No matter how you set it up,” he said, “you have to rely on the integrity of people.”

Last Friday, a laboratory in Earth City, Mo., pleaded guilty to one count of falsifying EPA-funded tests from 1987 to 1989. The company that owned the lab, TRC Cos., could be fined $500,000 and be forced to pay damages.