2 men convicted of providing fraudulent engineering services throughout Southern California

A Downey man and a Huntington Beach resident were convicted Wednesday, Nov. 20, of more than 200 felony counts each after falsifying documents and providing fraudulent engineering services for more than seven years, authorities said.

The structural integrity of construction projects on hundreds of homes across 56 cities in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties was called into question in April 2016 after a Rolling Hills Estates civil engineering firm contacted the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department with suspicions concerning two former employees.

Wilfrido Rodriguez, 47, of Downey and Ruben Gutierrez, 45, of Huntington Beach were ultimately arrested in March 2018 after authorities served 65 search warrants and identified more than 735 potential victims, authorities said.

Rodriguez, who was convicted of more than 250 felony counts, faces a possible sentence of more than 170 years behind bars. Gutierrez, convicted of more than 200 counts, faces up to 141 years in custody.

The two men, who once worked at Palos Verdes Engineering Co. as architectural and engineering drafters, prepared fraudulent engineering plans using software, stolen from the company, from 2007 to 2014, authorities said.

“(They) forged the signature of one of the licensed civil engineers that owned the engineering firm,” prosecutors said in a statement. “Both men also used the victim’s engineering seal in order to deceive homeowners and municipalities into believing that the victim had personally drafted the engineering plans and conducted structural observations as the structures were being built.”

The civil engineer did not review or approve any of the engineering plans created and submitted by the defendants, prosecutors said.

Rodriguez and Gutierrez were not licensed professional civil engineers, which called into question the safety of the structures built on their calculations and specifications.

Palos Verdes Engineering Co. has been in business since 1985.

The men were scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 27.