Honesty of Ex-Worker Proves Costly for Winston Tire : Settlement: The chairman urged employees to be truthful. Now the firm has agreed to pay $1.4 million on allegations that it overbilled customers.

Winston Tire Corp., which Monday agreed to pay $1.4 million on charges that it sold customers unneeded automotive parts, may have doomed itself by training employees to be honest, a Ventura County prosecutor said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory W. Brose said the case against the company was assisted in October, 1990, when a former Winston sales manager, who remembered being encouraged to be honest during training, contacted the prosecutor’s office about apparent overbilling at a San Fernando Valley shop.

Brose’s comments came as authorities announced the results of a joint 13-month investigation of Winston by the state attorney general’s office and the Ventura and Sacramento district attorney’s offices.

Brose said the former sales manager came to the Ventura County district attorney’s office because it had obtained an injunction against Winston in 1988 for performing unnecessary repairs. The former employee had been fired earlier on grounds of poor performance, Brose said, adding that he had made photocopies of repair invoices before his dismissal.

“When he initially went through training, (company Chairman) Sam Winston was there, and he talked about being honest,” Brose said.

Local prosecutors contacted the California Bureau of Automotive Repair, which informed them that Sacramento prosecutors were investigating consumer complaints against Winston.

Brose said the state automotive repair bureau agreed to send for inspection two cars in top condition to Winston Tire locations in Ventura County.

“Both resulted in unnecessary repairs,” Brose said.

One of the locations is in Simi Valley at 1842 E. Los Angeles Ave.; the other is in Thousand Oaks at 2343 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. Winston has three additional shops in the county, but they were not investigated directly. Local Winston managers referred all questions to their company’s headquarters in Burbank.

Officials there pointed out that Winston Tire did not admit any wrongdoing in reaching the settlement. In a prepared statement, Sam Winston said the company has implemented new policies and procedures to prevent future occurrences.

Under the terms of Monday’s agreement, Winston will pay $700,000 in civil penalties and costs. It will pay an additional $700,000 in administrative penalties to Ventura and Sacramento counties.

Of that $700,000, the two prosecutor’s offices will receive $75,000 each as reimbursement for their investigative costs related to the case.

The remaining $550,000 will be divided by the two counties and placed in their general funds.

Statewide, 20,000 customers will receive about $450,000 in restitution. Although Winston officials said the checks will be mailed within 45 days, they were not sure exactly how many checks would go to Ventura County customers.

“We haven’t even begun to figure that out,” said Steve Sugarman, a Winston spokesman.

The parts that were unnecessarily installed included shock absorbers, springs and brakes.

Brose said the overbilling and selling of unneeded parts were driven by a policy that provided Winston managers with year-end bonuses based on overall sales.

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