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A man accused of demanding $500,000 three years ago for not disclosing aspects of a mold infestation at an Oxnard hospital pleaded guilty Monday to making threats of extortion.

Lawyers on both sides of the case said Andrew Burroughs, 30, of Lompoc, threatened to disclose a problem that had already been identified. Burroughs worked at the time for a subcontractor involved in fighting mold at the hospital.

"The hospital had been working for years with both county and state regulators to remediate and abate the problem," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph O. Johns. "It doesn't seem to be a very good extortion plan to seek money for threatening to hold back information that the community is already aware of."

In a plea bargain at a federal court in Los Angeles, Burroughs pleaded guilty to sending an e-mail to St. John's parent company, Catholic Healthcare West, demanding money in return for not disseminating what he called incriminating photos and information. Johns said the company didn't pay the money and contacted federal authorities.

Officials from St. John's declined comment on the case.

St. John's has struggled with mold since opening its campus on Rose Avenue in Oxnard in 1992. Last year, the hospital paid a company a reported $24 million to fumigate the mold in a project that closed St. John's for 10 days. After the fumigation, hospital officials said the mold problem was gone.

Burroughs worked for an environmental company that was doing remediation work at St. John's in 2004 and 2005. In a story in The Star in 2006, Burroughs said he was fired the year before after a dispute with a supervisor over a respirator mask. He also claimed that some of the remediation work that came years before the fumigation may have failed to prevent mold from spreading.

Burroughs' lawyer, Kim Savo, described her client as a disgruntled employee who decided to threaten to expose a problem that was already being remediated.

"It's not exactly genius," she said.

Because the threat didn't represent any real danger, it shouldn't have been brought to federal court, Savo said.

"It's a big company and a little man," she said, suggesting that Catholic Healthcare West "threw their weight around."

As part of the plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to recommend Burroughs be sentenced to no more than 10 months in prison. The maximum sentence for the offense is two years, Johns said.