A company executive has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges alleging his fogging disinfection business applied pesticides inconsistent with their intended use to purportedly kill the coronavirus in Culver City.

Prosecutors have recommended that David Earl Gillies, managing partner of Utah-based Mountain Fog, receive two years probation and be ordered to pay a $10,000 fine for two misdemeanor counts of using a pesticide in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.

Gillies, reached by phone at his home Wednesday, March 23, said he does not agree with how his case was handled.

“The EPA never notified us that we were out of compliance or gave us a chance to come into compliance,” he said. “It’s government overreach and the EPA agent (who investigated the case) is just trying to put another notch in his belt.”

Court records do not indicate when Gillies will be sentenced.

In August 2021, Jonathan Gershman, a salesman for Mountain Fog, pleaded guilty to identical charges and received the same sentence.

Gillies was charged after Mountain Fog collected $11,097 for providing COVID-19 fogging services at least six times, including once at an undisclosed Culver City business in April 2020, according to a plea agreement filed last week in U.S. District Court.

Mountain Fog used two products to provide fogging disinfection.

“Their employees would first apply ‘Alpha,’ which they claimed would kill COVID-19,” the plea agreement says. “Their employees would then apply ‘Omega,’ which they claimed would kill COVID-19 on surfaces for 90 days after treatment.”

Mountain Fog’s website claimed that if someone coughs or sneezes, “the droplets will fall out of the air over time and come into contact with the Omega treated surface,” which would then kill the microbes and render the surface safe, according to prosecutors.

“Defendant knew that Alpha and Omega were actually different registered pesticides that he (Gillies) and the company renamed and claimed were their own,” says the agreement.

Alpha was actually a registered pesticide called Minncare, a product that could be used to sanitize hard surfaces only if applied for 11 hours, while Omega was a different registered pesticide called SiS AM500 that was not registered for use against any virus, according to prosecutors.

A special agent with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Criminal Investigations working undercover contacted Mountain Fog about using the company’s disinfection services at several properties in the Los Angeles area.

On June 23, 2020, a Mountain Fog employee arrived at a home where the agent was waiting, posing as a customer.

The employee set up the fogging equipment and showed the Alpha and Omega products that he intended to use to the agent, but the operation was stopped once the fogger was turned on.

A Mountain Fog salesmen who was confronted by the agent after the operation was halted indicated he was uncomfortable with the company’s COVID-19 claims and said he strongly raised those concerns with Gillies, who maintained the claims were valid, the plea agreement says.

In most cases, fogging, fumigation, and wide-area or electrostatic spraying are not recommended as primary methods of surface disinfection and have several safety risks to consider, unless specified as a method of application on the product label, said the Centers for Disease Control.

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