STATE TO LOOK INTO AUTO FRAUD; CONSUMERS PAYING FOR FALSE REPAIRS.

Byline: Jennifer Coleman Associated Press 

California consumers are paying $5 billion a year for auto body repairs that are substandard, dangerously unstable or never done, the director of the state's Bureau of Automotive Repairs said Wednesday.

In recent undercover stings of auto body repair shops, the consumer advocacy office found 40 percent of bills were fraudulent, director Allen Wood said at a Senate Insurance Committee hearing.

Consumer advocates, insurance representatives and auto body repair shop owners testified that the problem is costing the public money and could compromise safety.

Repair shop owner Rocko Avellini of Hawaiian Gardens operates a consumer advocacy service that checks repairs. ``We have done more than 400 wreck checks and haven't seen one repair done correctly,'' he said.

If the finish on the car is within reason, poor or even dangerous repairs are often undetectable to the owner, Wood said. He used a 1993 Mercedes 500SL parked on a flatbed truck near the State Capitol to illustrate his point.

``This car is really not safe to be on the road. But if you just got this car back from the repair shop, you'd have no idea,'' he said. The car's owner drove the car for weeks, unaware of structural problems resulting from a bad repair job, Wood said.

Repairs on the $85,000 sports car totaled over $18,000, but investigators found that $7,800 of the bill was for parts never installed and labor that was never done. The owner of that repair shop is being prosecuted, he said.

During the investigation, the bureau found that as the repair bills increased, the percentage of the bill that was fraudulent also increased. ``The more damage there is, the more room there is to hide things,'' Wood said.

Lawmakers will also study agreements that insurance companies make with repair shops requiring flat rates for services, said Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Daly City.