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WASHINGTON/DETROIT (Reuters) - 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.
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VW Engineer Sentenced to 40-month Prison Term in Diesel Case
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Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven;
confess them to man and you will be laughed at.
-- Josh Billings
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AnonTechie on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:29AM (13 children)
I don't believe that only one VW engineer could have engineered this whole scam. How is this justice ? How about jailing all those executives who knew about this scam and went along with it ? It seems they found one scapegoat and hung him out to dry !!
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:37AM (2 children)
No doubt, the engineer admitted guilty following his VW funded lawyer's advice thus preventing any further investigation due to double jeopardy. And not to worry, VW will surely cover his fines and whatever else he might need during and following his imprisonment. After all, sending the right message to the rest of their engineering and executive staff is essential during these turbulent times.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Informative) by stormreaver on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:45AM (1 child)
That's not how Double Jeopardy works. Mr. Liang can't be tried again for the same crime, but nothing (except the will to do so) prevents an investigation and trial of other people for the same emissions crime.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @04:02PM
The prosecutor will have to invalidate Liang's testimony where he took sole responsibility. Regardless of the obvious appeal that to follow, the prosecutor will need to argue different, new evidences and somehow find a new crime to try Liang and the board members for... Then he'll need to connect Liang with the executives without Liang own untrustworthy testimony. And it might be stating the obvious, but if the prosecution had those evidence they would have used them by now instead of relying on Liang's testimony.
Everyone from criminal organizations to bankers pull this off all the time using convicted criminals to take responsibility over crimes they never did. Only very strong evidences help and, again, the prosecution would have used those already if they had them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:59AM (1 child)
Of course this one engineer wasn't responsible. There were a boatload of executives onboard, as well. But, executives get golden parachutes and stuff like that. As you asy, this engineer was the sacrificial lamb, to appease the public, and the justice department.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Sunday November 26 2017, @03:03PM
I wonder how widespread this practice is in Germany and elsewhere. We know VW cooked its numbers. Recently my cousin told me a similar story about the plastics factory he had run in Kentucky for a parent company in Germany. He discovered the company had been cooking the numbers on its specs for years and told his engineers and executives to stop. They would explain to their customers that they had made measurement errors and had now corrected the problem. The parent company fired him for it so they could keep on cooking the numbers.
Theoretically the government is supposed to regulate standards and ensure compliance, but most products specs probably go unmonitored. Caveat emptor to a certain degree, but in the end it's fraud and fraud is always illegal.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tonyPick on Sunday November 26 2017, @12:02PM (4 children)
According to this he's just the first, and there'll be others: From TFA
And there's more details here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/business/volkswagen-engineer-prison-diesel-cheating.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday November 26 2017, @12:09PM (1 child)
If, however, the engineer is the one receiving the harshest sentence (which seems entirely possible), that's definitely disproportionate. And if I had to hazard a guess, the executives at VW would throw him under a bus in a heartbeat if they think it would save their own butts.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:47PM
Well, if they're going to throw him under a bus, I hope it's the new electric bus, that would be a fitting end.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday November 26 2017, @02:53PM (1 child)
This is as high as it will go. No executives will serve jail time.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday November 27 2017, @11:31AM
Yep. They've made an example of him to show they are tough on crime, now they can quietly plea deal all the executives down to (company paid) fines.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @02:14PM (2 children)
Isn't this old news and a dupe? https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/08/27/1239207 [soylentnews.org]
Anyway he's not a mere junior engineer or newbie. He's a senior level engineer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/business/volkswagen-engineer-prison-diesel-cheating.html [nytimes.com]
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-25/vw-engineer-sentenced-to-40-months-for-emissions-cheating-role [bloomberg.com]
He's at the level where he's supposed to be experienced enough to know to push back if the bosses asked him to do something illegal. And where he'd have everything in writing if they insisted.
It's the job of CxOs/bosses to ask the engineers to do stuff to benefit the company (or the CxOs/bosses) that may or may not be possible. It's the job of the engineers to provide "guidance" or "pushback" if it involves breaking any laws legal or physical...
I'd be more unhappy if they had thrown the junior engineers under Liang into jail. As it is if Liang doesn't have a stash of stuff to shift some jailtime to the "real mastermind", his bosses and CxOs; or get some huge payoff from VW then he really screwed up. All senior staff around the world should learn to not do what Liang did or at least get a huge pile of "insurance"...
Happens too when building stuff - Boss says "make it cheaper, use less/cheaper concrete/steel". Engineer - "that's as cheap as we can go". Sometimes there may actually be creative and clever ways of getting it done cheaper and still be safe and the Engineer might eventually figure that out. Or it might really be impossible with current technology. The Boss normally won't know such stuff, and it's not his job to know.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 27 2017, @04:04PM (1 child)
This is too idealistic. In reality, if the engineer doesn't do what the boss wants (regardless of legality, ethics, etc.), then the engineer gets fired, misses out on promotions, etc.
So the engineer gets all the risk, while the executives get golden parachutes and multi-million dollar compensation packages.
The moral of the story: don't go into engineering. It doesn't pay that well, it requires too much work/long hours, you don't get to work with any women, the job security is poor, and worst of all you'll probably have to use Windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:59PM
Maybe that's true where you are, e.g. Nazi Germany. Just following orders and all that.