Two months after environmental regulators voided lead paint certifications for hundreds of homes across Maryland, a Baltimore inspector pleaded guilty to submitting altered reports.

Rodney Bryan Barkley, owner of Green Environmental, pleaded guilty Friday to four counts of submitting false lead inspection certificates, misdemeanors that each carry a prison sentence of up to two years and a fine of up to $50,000.

Barkley’s guilty plea, entered in Baltimore City Circuit Court, applies to only a handful of the 31 counts brought against him by the Maryland attorney general’s office, according to case documents.

Through his attorney, Barkley declined to comment Wednesday on the plea. A spokesperson for Attorney General Anthony Brown also declined to comment.

Maryland environmental regulators first began looking into Barkley in March 2024 and filed civil charges against him and his business late last year.

At that time, the Maryland Department of the Environment alleged Green Environmental was responsible for close to 100 erroneous lead-free certificates. Attorneys for the state asked the court to impose penalties, which if enforced to the maximum would total nearly $150 million.

A state investigation soon found the problem was more widespread.

In July, the attorney general’s office escalated its case against Green Environmental, hitting Barkley with criminal charges while MDE invalidated another 1,400 of his business’s lead certifications.

Environmental regulators said then that at least three children at properties inspected by Barkley’s business had tested positive for elevated levels of lead in their blood.

Barkley and his attorney appeared in court Friday to enter guilty pleas on four counts that he knowingly submitted false lead certificates to state regulators, as well as a fifth count of operating a radiation machine without a license.

He did not, however, plead guilty to charges that he knowingly altered the facts of his reports.

According to charging documents, the state’s investigation found that many of Barkley’s lead abatement certificates relied on lab reports with altered dates, addresses, and dust sample information, and even PDFs edited to remove lead concentrations.

The state’s civil case against Green Environmental remains open.

Lead paint once poisoned thousands of children a year in Baltimore. Regulators have dramatically reduced these risks since the 1990s, but in many old buildings where paint peels and chips off the walls, the neurotoxin remains a hazard.

In Baltimore alone, the number of housing units still containing dangerous levels of lead may be over 85,000, according to a 2022 report by the Abell Foundation.

Baltimore, where Green Environmental is based, accounts for nearly half of the company’s invalidated certificates, but Barkley issued faulty inspections across the state, from Bethesda to Middle River and from Hagerstown to Ocean City.

Of the reports invalidated in July, about two-thirds are lead-free certificates, according to MDE. These are especially consequential because, typically, old houses must be reassessed each time a home is sold or a new tenant moves in, but any home found to be lead-free never needs inspection again.

The remaining voided certificates cleared properties of lead on the inside but not the outside, requiring reinspection every two years.

Barkley is scheduled to return to circuit court for a sentencing hearing on Feb. 3.