Punishment for Engineer: Invent a Shower Meter

A federal judge on Monday asked the owner of a Gardena parts company, who admitted paying a kickback on a government contract, to invent a water meter for shower heads and employ inner-city youths to make it.

“You have the technical skills. You have the engineering skills,” U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian told James T. Spiropoulos, 60, of Palos Verdes, owner of Fastener Innovation Technology. Spiropoulos and FIT pleaded guilty in May to paying $3,000 in kickbacks to Donald Wright, an engineer at Hughes Ground Systems Group in Fullerton.

Tevrizian fined Spiropoulos $10,000 and his company $25,000, but offered to lower the company’s fine by $10,000 if Spiropoulos invents the meter.