General Discussion

He paid his workers crap, and cheated a lot of his large family members who helped him get off the ground when he started expanding by roping them in as "free" or delayed pay labor.

A lot of the 'Bertos restaurants around Southern California were started by former employees and pissed off family members who quit on him and started their own places; when he tried to sue a bunch of them (e.g. Filibertos, Rigabertos, Albertos, Adarbertos, and Alibertos - the latter was started by Alison, his niece) for "trademark" in the 1990's he lost big.

As for his claim of "inventing" the California Burrito (A loaded 2 lb. Carne Asada burrito with french fries), it was invented by a rival storefront Mexican place - Seguros, I think - in El Cajon in early 1980 -something (because that situation became almost a gangland style war when the California Burrito first came out). He did invent the cholesterol bomb known as Carne Asada steak fries.

But yeah, his reputation for abuse and paycheck theft against his employees was so widespread, that even the undocumented didn't want to work for him and all the social service, student services, and charity "job finder" places still refuse to list his restaurants for potential employment; he ended up having to close down and sell about 2/3 of his 24 restaurants over the mid 2000's.