Calif. Restaurant Fined $140K for Infractions Including Hiring Fake Priest to Hear Workers’ Confessions

The owners of Taqueria Garibaldi used a phony clergyman to interrogate employees about their workplace “sins”

The Department of Labor has ordered a taqueria chain in California to pay a total of $140,000 in back wages and damages to 35 employees after businesses owners committed a number of infractions, the oddest of all included hiring a fake priest to extract confessions of “sins” from employees.

Taqueria Garibaldi, a restaurant with a location in Sacramento and Roseville, was at the center of the controversy.

Che Garibaldi, Inc. — and its owners and operators Eduardo Hernandez, Hector Manual Martinez Galindo and Alejandro Rodriguez — agreed to a consent judgment in the case, which was ruled upon by Judge William B. Shubb from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on May 8. In addition to the $140,000, the individuals were fined $5,000 in civil penalties "due to the willful nature of their violations."

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Results of the investigation and civil court case were announced by the Department of Labor on June 12.

In their release, they said federal investigators from the department’s Wage and Hour Division found that Taqueria Garibaldi had violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by denying overtime to employees who worked over 40 hours a week. Other infractions from Che Garibaldi, Inc., according to the release, included "paying managers from the employee tip pool illegally, threatened employees with retaliation and adverse immigration consequences for cooperating with the department, and firing one worker who they believed had complained to the department."

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As for the claim that the restaurant offered a supposed priest to hear confessionals during work hours, that was surfaced by a Taqueria Garibaldi employee who testified under oath that the priest urged worker to "get the sins out" that only had to do with their employment.

“As soon as the confession started, I found the conversation to be strange and unlike normal confessions, where I would tell a priest about the sins I wanted to confess,” testified Maria Parra in a sworn declaration obtained by The Los Angeles Times. "He asked if I ever got pulled over for speeding, if I drank alcohol, or if I had stolen anything. The priest mostly had work-related questions, which I thought was strange. ... The priest asked if I had stolen anything at work, if I was late to my employment, if I did anything to harm my employer and if I had any bad intentions toward my employment."

The fake priest had no affiliation with the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, authorities said.

“Our own investigation found no evidence of any connection between the Diocese of Sacramento and the alleged priest in this matter,” Bryan J. Visitacion, director of media and communications for the Diocese of Sacramento, told The Catholic News Agency last week. “While we don’t know who the person in question was, we are completely confident he was not a priest of the Diocese of Sacramento.”

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PEOPLE reached out to Che Garibaldi Inc. for comment.

"Federal wage and hour investigators have seen corrupt employers try all kinds of scams to shortchange workers and to intimidate or retaliate against employees but a northern California restaurant’s attempt to use an alleged priest to get employees to admit workplace 'sins' may be among the most shameless," Regional Solicitor of Labor Marc Pilotin said in a release.

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