Volkswagen Engineer Pleads Guilty in US Diesel Emissions Probe (fortune.com)

A Volkswagen AG engineer on Friday pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in the Justice Department's probe into the German automaker's diesel emissions scandal -- the first person charged by U.S. authorities in the environmental probe, reports Reuters. From the report:James Liang, who has worked for VW VLKPF since 1983 and was part of a team of engineers who developed a diesel engine, was charged in an indictment made public on Friday with conspiring to commit wire fraud and violating U.S. clean air laws. The 62-year-old engineer from Newbury Park, Calif., appeared in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Friday and entered into a plea agreement that includes his cooperation with the government in its investigation. The indictment says Liang conspired with current and former VW employees to mislead U.S. regulators about the software that allowed the automaker to evade American emissions standards.

Comments

Re:scapegoat much?

[DaHat]

A) Who says he will be the only one facing charges?
B) If your boss asks you to do something illegal and you agree, you are still committing a crime, but best to make sure that request is in writing so you can drag them to jail with you as well.
C) If only he would have hosted all of his emails on a private email server then allowed a backup copy to be lost in the mail and ordered a subordinate to wipe other backups... then he not only wouldn't be looking at jail time, but could be a Democrat Presidential Nominee... if he happened to be a natural born US citizen.