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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: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday August 28 2017, @01:30AM
They're going to have to prove that the bosses knew of the defeat device.
Sadly, when you have an idiot boss yelling at you to get shit done and quickly, and there's a lot at stake and you can't afford to walk out of your job, all options are on the table. I made the mistake of admitting this during a job interview with Qualcomm. I guess they didn't also like my mention of treating the planners to lunch when they put my stuff at the front of a very busy line.
In my comment above, I didn't perpetrate any of those acts I witnessed except for once -- double-backward wiring in the field. I didn't tell anybody (other than a very trusted teammate who was out with me) and that dirty action threw a good 100K of revenue on the last day of the last week of the last month of the quarter. For the size of the division I was working for at the time, that was pretty goddamn significant, like a game-changing touchdown with seconds left on the clock. I still check up on the status of that system from time to time, and it's still doing well.