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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A federal judge in Detroit sentenced former engineer James Liang to 40 months in prison on Friday for his role in Volkswagen AG's (VOWG_p.DE) multiyear scheme to sell diesel cars that generated more pollution than U.S. clean air rules allowed.
U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox also ordered Liang to pay a $200,000 fine, 10 times the amount sought by federal prosecutors. Cox said he hoped the prison sentence and fine would deter other auto industry engineers and executives from similar schemes to deceive regulators and consumers.
Liang was part of a long-term conspiracy that perpetrated a "stunning fraud on the American consumer," Cox said, as the defendant's family looked on in the courtroom. "This is a very serious and troubling crime against our economic system."
Liang pleaded guilty earlier this year to misleading regulators, and had cooperated with U.S. law enforcement officials investigating Volkswagen.
Prosecutors last week recommended that Liang, 63, receive a three-year prison sentence, reflecting credit for his months of cooperation with the U.S. investigation of Volkswagen's diesel emissions fraud. Liang could have received a five-year prison term under federal sentencing guidelines. Liang's lawyers had asked for a sentence of home detention and community service.
Liang can appeal the sentence, Cox said.
Volkswagen pleaded guilty in March to three felony charges under an agreement with prosecutors to resolve the U.S. criminal probe of the company itself. It agreed to spend as much as $25 billion in the United States to resolve claims from owners and regulators and offered to buy back about 500,000 vehicles.
Volkswagen has admitted that it used software to deceive regulators in the United States and Europe from 2006 to 2015.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday August 28 2017, @12:24AM (2 children)
Among the crimes I have seen in the electronics industry over the years:
- Selling the customer used parts as new, or selling the customer a "new" assembly with used parts in it.
- Environmental crimes, dumping noxious shit down gutters, etc.
- Employees being forced to use nasty solvents like MEK and Bio-solv in enclosed areas without fume hoods or breathing apparatus
- Shitty or bogus timekeeping on government contracts
- Bullshitting tech data on the fly even though there were no procedures for the item
- An assembly shipped full of loose screws (also on a government contract)
- Assemblies wired backwards, then re-wired double-backwards in the field to compensate (imagine my surprise when i opened the system up only to see a handwritten note wrapped in an ESD back explaining the situation).
- I was not present for this one, but sunflower seed shells found in a system
- Ridiculously dangerous large industrial machinery which frequently dropped 400-pound chunks of metal into the wash tanks from 6-ft height (and also the only job I ever literally just walked out of after getting sick of that shit).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @11:39PM (1 child)
And how many of those did you document and report?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 02 2017, @10:57PM
Ha, ha.
You're funny, kid.