According to the companies? admissions, employees at SPI facilities in the Portland area generally altered the tests in one of two ways. First, from in or about 1996 through in or about 2006, an SPI plant manager led a scheme to make thousands of handwritten alterations to failing test results by changing failing numbers that fell below the minimum required test results to appear to be passing. Those numbers were then typed onto a certification and provided to customers. Second, from in or about 2002 through September 2015, Dennis Balius, the SPI testing lab supervisor, led a scheme to alter tests within SPI?s computerized systems and provide false certifications with the altered results to customers. Balius also instructed employees to violate other testing standards, such as increasing the speed of the testing machines or cutting samples in a manner that did not meet the required specifications. Balius pleaded guilty in July 2017 and was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay over $170,000 in restitution.
According to court documents, the SPI employees generally engaged in these practices to conceal the inconsistent quality of aluminum extrusions produced by SPI, avoid the costly scrapping of metal and accompanying production delays, improve SPI?s and SEI?s profits, and receive bonuses that were calculated in part based on a production metric.
