The owners of a California taqueria chain have been ordered to pay $70,000 in damages to employees who met with a “person identified as a priest” to confess workplace sins.

Thirty-five employees of Taqueria Garibaldi, which has locations in Sacramento and Roseville, were awarded the amount following an investigation by the US Department of Labor.

“An employee told the court the ‘priest’ urged workers to ‘get the sins out’ and asked them if they had stolen from the employer, been late for work, had done anything to harm their employer, or if they had bad intentions toward their employer,” a press release from the Department declared.

They added that the intimidating stunt was “among the most shameless” they had ever seen.

[This is a follow-up to a story I followed last week. At first, it didn’t seem as though the DoL had actually concluded that the priest was fake, but apparently that was a major part of the fine. This should be treated as criminal fraud rather than civil fraud, but at the very least, the customers of Taqueria Garibaldi know that its owner is a blasphemous fraud. Hopefully they will generate the proper market response to that. — Ed]