San Diego
A former manager of a La Jolla laboratory who pleaded guilty to making false statements to the government in the testing of soil samples from Superfund toxic waste sites was placed on two years unsupervised probation Monday.
Gary Smith of Encinitas was given no jail time or fine by U.S. District Court Judge Rudi Brewster, which matched the sentences of two other laboratory technicians sentenced earlier.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Melanie Pierson had asked for a sentence of 100 hours of volunteer work plus a $5,000 fine for Smith.
The defendants had admitted falsifying testing dates and calibrations of tests on soil samples, but it was the firm itself that eventually notified the government of some problems with the tests.
The three former employees worked at Science Applications International Corp. of the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory.
The former technicians, Celso de Oliveira and Larry Flynn, both of San Diego, were given probation on Nov. 13 when they entered guilty pleas.
The soil samples from Superfund toxic waste sites were tested to establish priorities so that the most dangerous sites could be cleaned up first and to determine the amount and identity of the toxic chemicals.
A number of shortcuts in the tests occurred, including backdating reports of samples tested to make it appear they had been analyzed earlier as required by contract, U.S. Atty. William Braniff said at a press conference Nov. 13.
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