Auto Repair Shop Fined Over Smog Tests

The owner of a Reseda auto repair shop pleaded no contest Friday to working as an unlicensed smog-check technician to issue fraudulent emission-control certificates, authorities said.

Gassan Munib Jurdi, 45, of Panorama City, who owns Jurdi Auto Repair at 6723 Reseda Blvd., was ordered to pay $8,620 in fines and other costs for one count each of unauthorized use of a computer and working as an unlicensed smog-check technician, said Deputy City Atty. P. Greg Parham with the city attorney’s Consumer Protection Unit.

Parham said Jurdi would hire smog-check technicians, then fire them or let them go after getting their access codes to the Test Analyzer System, the computer system that runs an emission test on vehicles.

The state Bureau of Automotive Repair began investigating Jurdi in August 1994, when a former employee who is licensed as a smog-check technician told the bureau that he was no longer working for Jurdi and that he wanted his access code removed from the emission-control system, authorities said.

When bureau officials went to Jurdi’s shop to remove the access code, they saw that Jurdi was conducting a smog-check inspection, Parham said. The officials then set up a surveillance and watched Jurdi conduct several inspections, he said. Bureau officials later found records showing that 10 illegal smog checks had been done that morning using access codes from former employees, authorities said.

About $3,220 of Jurdi’s fines will go to the state Consumer Protection Trust Fund, which is set up to give money back to crime victims in consumer protection fraud cases, Parham said.