Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Fast-Food Company Fined $2,700 : Lancaster: Taco Tec Inc. pleads no contest to failing to carry workers’ compensation insurance at two outlets.

A popular Antelope Valley-based Mexican fast-food company was fined $2,700 Wednesday for failing to carry workers’ compensation insurance. In a separate case, authorities disclosed that the company’s founder was convicted of violating federal drug laws in a case that led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Taco Tec Inc. entered no contest pleas in Antelope Municipal Court to two misdemeanor charges involving the company’s two Lancaster outlets and the fine was imposed by Judge Richard Spann.

But the case was only a small part of the mounting legal troubles faced by the chain and its founder, Armando L. Sanchez, a 38-year-old Granada Hills resident.

In return for the plea of no contest by the company, misdemeanor charges filed against Sanchez personally and two other company officers--his ex-wife Patsy Stewart and his mother Estrella Sanchez--will be dismissed, prosecutors said.

Sanchez started in 1988 with one restaurant in Palmdale and during the past five years built the chain into 18 outlets throughout Southern California, although some have since been sold to other owners. He or Taco Tec Inc. still owns the Avenue K and Avenue L stores in Lancaster--which are involved in the Lancaster complaint--and three in Bakersfield, among others.

In addition to the Lancaster case, prosecutors in Kern County filed a 31-count felony criminal complaint against Sanchez in June for payroll and reporting irregularities at the Bakersfield outlets. That complaint disclosed that Sanchez had served a federal prison sentence for a drug violation in the 1980s, because the prior conviction could increase the sentence the state charges carry.

It was a challenge by Sanchez and several co-defendants in the drug case that led to a groundbreaking 1984 Supreme Court ruling that evidence obtained through faulty search warrants can be used in court, provided officers acted in “good faith,” said Kern County Deputy Dist. Atty. C. M. Starr II, who is prosecuting Sanchez in the Bakersfield case.

Sanchez and the other defendants challenged a search by Burbank police in 1981, Starr said. The searches were upheld and Sanchez was convicted in Los Angeles federal court.

Starr said Wednesday that Sanchez was sentenced to four years in federal prison but the sentence apparently was later reduced to two years.

Sanchez’ prior federal conviction could add a year to the five years in state prison he now faces in the Kern County criminal case, Starr said. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for next month in Bakersfield, where Sanchez has operated three Taco Tec outlets.