"A Volkswagen compliance executive who pleaded guilty in the US for his role in the company's $US30 billion ($40 billion) emissions cheating scandal has been sentenced to seven years in prison."
Ars Technica reports:
On Wednesday, a US District judge in Detroit sentenced Oliver Schmidt, a former Volkswagen executive, to seven years in prison for his role in the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal of 2015. Schmidt was also ordered to pay a criminal penalty of $400,000, according to a US Department of Justice (DOJ) press release. The prison term and the fine together represent the maximum sentence that Schmidt could have received under the plea deal he signed in August.
Schmidt, a German citizen who lived in Detroit as an emissions compliance executive for VW, was arrested in Miami on vacation last January. In August, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and to making a false statement under the Clean Air Act. Schmidt’s plea deal stated that the former executive could face up to seven years in prison and between $40,000 and $400,000 in fines.
Last week, Schmidt’s attorneys made a last-minute bid requesting a lighter sentence for Schmidt: 40 months of supervised release and a $100,000 fine. Schmidt also wrote a letter to the judge, which surfaced over the weekend, in which the executive said he felt “misused” by his own company and claimed that higher-ranked VW executives coached him on a script to help him lie to a California Air Resources Board (CARB) official.
Also at NYT.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 08 2017, @08:40PM
It's clearly working for Der Orangen Furher... and the big ones like Charlie Koch, and even non-assholes like Sergey Brin, have dedicated security staff who do nothing but analyze and optimize their employer's security profile - vetting people who have access to their food, and even sweeping their routes to check for risk tells. Sergey makes his security chief nuts by rollerskating to work, but that's the balance - live life and expose yourself a bit, or crawl deep in a hole. I think the Koch brothers probably have a private subway system... not saying you couldn't put a bullet in the Gipper if you really tried, but it's getting much harder lately.
🌻🌻 [google.com]