‘Shameless’ restaurant hired fake priest to learn employees’ sins

The owners of a California restaurant have been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in back wages and damages after they were caught hiring a “person identified as a priest” to learn its employees’ workplace sins.

The U.S. Department of Labor said in a release that an employee testified that Che Garibaldi, Inc. and its owners and operators Eduardo Hernandez, Hector Manual Martinez Galindo and Alejandro Rodriguez, hired the fake member of clergy to hear confessions during work hours at two locations of Taqueria Garibaldi.

The workers were encouraged to “get the sins out,” and asked if they were ever late for work or had stolen money from the business, as well as if they had “bad intentions” toward their employer.

“This employer’s despicable attempts to retaliate against employees were intended to silence workers, obstruct an investigation and prevent the recovery of unpaid wages,” the Department’s solicitors wrote.

The Department declared the intimidating stunt was “among the most shameless” they had ever seen.

The identity of the so-called priest has not been disclosed.

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“The person in question is not a priest of the Diocese of Sacramento,” Bryan Visitacion, a spokesman for the Diocese of Sacramento, said in an email to the New York Times, adding that he didn’t know who the man was.

Maria Parra, an employee of Taqueria Garibaldi, told the New York Post she was one of the workers that was victimized by the scam.

“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,” Parra told a federal court in a sworn declaration.

She told the outlet that the “priest” was only interested in hearing about sins committed on the job.

The scam was found out when the Department of Labor was investigating unpaid wages, and they also discovered that the company denied employees overtime wages, violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The statement says the owners of the restaurant “threatened employees with retaliation and adverse immigration consequences for cooperating with the Department, and fired one worker who they believed had complained to the Department.”

As a result, Taqueria Garibaldi is now required to pay $70,000 in damages and another $70,000 in back pay to the employees.