Slashdot Mirror
VW Engineer Sentenced To 40-Month Prison Term In Diesel Case (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 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 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. 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.
But the President who instantly retired the moment diesel gate broke. Took his 50 mil pension plan, walks away Scott free. Sounds legit
The engineer gets prosecuted for decisions signed off by the executives?
To diligently fall on his sword.
Nothing more to see here folks, it's all been brushed neatly under the carpet.
...but $200,000 for an engineer combined with the 40 months? If they're going to do that to the engineer following instructions, then they better be much harsher on the executives and managers that told the engineer to do it in the first place.
Let's keep those profits rolling, we have engineers to burn! America needs to wise up and start jailing the senior management. It's sad times for America when South Korea is the one with balls while America just rolls over and takes it.
I guess everyone needs an indemnification clause in their contract. Else good luck with any software development for military, public transportation, autonomous cars, health, and so on....
Part of what you pay an engineer to do is take responsibility for things. That's why you need a cert to call yourself a "Professional Engineer" Same concept as a bridge falling. Some technical person put his approval on it as the end-all, so that technical person takes responsibility. It's part of his/her job. I think the execs should all get smacked a little harder too, but this is fitting.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Amazing how we come from a world of law and order, to a world where polluting the air is more of a serious offense then committing a crime. I have no doubt this is a offense that was obviously pre meditated to do exactly what it did. Skirt the emission laws to satisfy both customer demands and their admission that diesel engines simply cannot meet them without cheating. Not only did these engineers loose a lot, but the customers who bought the cars lost big time too.
It's entirely possible that this engineer hated what he was doing, complained about it many times, and did everything he could to stop VW from doing this. Then they threatened to fire him and burn his career, and in a desperate situation, he caved in and did what management was asking.
It sucks when someone with power and/or authority orders you to do something unethical.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That an engineer would have the ability to set policy for a multinational car company.
Requiem for the American Dream
As an engineer, this is not surprising, but it is also disappointing. Given how dishonest VW has been, it would not surprise me to find out that they convinced this guy he was going to prison anyway (engineers have unseverable criminal liability in most modern countries regarding both fraud and willful negligence) and his family has a pallet of hundred dollar bills sitting in their garage (or in a Swiss bank account) to keep this engineer from testifying against middle and upper management, as well as a few C-level executives. There is no way that this happened in a vacuum without management knowing about it.
The couple of times I have been asked to do something morally questionable as an engineer and on several occasions when I saw a design error that presented the risk of death or great bodily injury, I made sure to follow up my concerns with a summarizing email to the the manager and his manager, and BCC myself on my personal email. The middle management squeals like a stuck pig over that kind of accountability, but engineers have a very real moral responsibility to protect society beyond most other professions. That has always resolved the issue, but I am always prepared to go directly to the CEO or if that doesn't work, state officials. When engineers don't have that level of commitment to protecting the public, scores of people can be injured or killed. In one instance, a space shuttle exploded.
Besides that, enriching someone else is the absolute dumbest reason I can think of to go to prison. Criminals in general are pretty stupid, but at least they have figured out that if you are going to rob a bank, you rob it for yourself, not stock holders or managers...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
The first conviction after two years - not bad! Now help my memory - how long took it the US justice system to jail the first banksters after the subprime mortgage scandal?
Sorry - my bad! I forgot that we apply quite different standards for banks.
I think the title of the slashdot article is misleading. While he was a VW Engineer he is currently a VW Executive. Also, he isn't the only one charged.
"U.S. prosecutors have charged eight current and former Volkswagen executives in connection with the diesel emissions cheating probe. Liang is one of the lowest-ranking executives charged so far."
Part of the reason they fined him and sentenced him to jail was his "pivotal" role in the fraud.
He has had 10 years to come clean and hasn't done it. So I think he deserves what is coming to him, and the other executives as well.
So if it's such a crime against humanity for what VW did with their diesel cars then where is the outrage over all the big semi-trailer trucks? Seems like hypocrisy. After all those big trucks only get 4-8 m.p.g.. Which puts out the most NOX emissions? Ditto for the big 4x4 diesel pickups. Half of them I hear going up the road sound like they don't even have mufflers on them. Never liked diesels.
But why the fuck would this deter any execs from doing this again?
They don't care about some engineer lackey. They need to throw the management in prison for 40 months.
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."
There is a very special club for those who are allowed to do that, and you're not in it, buddy.
I drive a 2001 VW diesel car. Still runs good as new after 16+ years. Still perfectly legal, because it was manufactured before the EPA arbitrarily changed the emissions goal posts to shut VW's diesel cars out of the USA car market.
How can domestic companies compete with VW cars that get better fuel mileage, longer range, and never break? They can't! THAT is why we're seeing this smackdown on VW.
Go read the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. The USA companies are attempting to succeed, not through superior technology, production and trade, but by trading influence and favors with politicians and their bureaucracies.
The fact that an ENGINEER, the very type of person that has skills necessary to generate innovation and technological progress, has been wasted on developing a "bureaucracy defeat device" rather than an actual beneficial technological advance and then subsequently sent to JAIL should be a wake up call to engineers everywhere.
In Atlas Shrugged, competent engineers, executives, and workers alike slowly started fading away to toil in private rather than continuing to work for the public where bureaucracy can smack them around.
Don't be surprised when bridges and dams start failing in the future. Oh wait, already happening...
No, he was sent to jail because VW lied about it on three separate occasions to US regulators and got caught on discrepancies multiple times over the course of a decade. It was the final time that the exact nature of their corruption was uncovered and what they got the smackdown for.
I drive a 2001 VW diesel car. Still runs good as new after 16+ years. Still perfectly legal, because it was manufactured before the EPA arbitrarily changed the emissions goal posts to shut VW's diesel cars out of the USA car market.
How can domestic companies compete with VW cars that get better fuel mileage, longer range, and never break? They can't! THAT is why we're seeing this smackdown on VW.
Go read the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. The USA companies are attempting to succeed, not through superior technology, production and trade, but by trading influence and favors with politicians and their bureaucracies.
Diesel cars are a bit of a mess with certain kinds of pollutants. The EPA regulates allowed levels of pollutants. That is their job. They did their job. Now if you are saying they did their job without due study and consideration, well, prove it.
The job of the EPA is to protect the environment with reasonable laws. They should be considering not just tomorrow but centuries from now. The cost to society of the laws is a factor, as is the cost of not implementing them.
If a technology that exists is no longer cost effective by the time you mitigate the pollution, then well life goes on. Deal with it. You can convert coal to gas and diesel, but it is apparently a very dirty process so, guess what, we don't do that too often.
You only get to whine if we give different standards to American manufacturers than to foreign. Besides fraud is fraud. Throw em all in jail and make sure the companies pay the full expected cost to society of the additional pollution through the cars expected lifetime.
Stupid court.
Because not one of the management had any clue what was actually going on, and didn't force him to do it?
Sure.
Great book, but not really relevant to this issue. At least not in the way you presented. US companies are subject to the same regulations as VW, so this isn't really favoritism for financial advantage to US companies. What you could say however, is that it pushes along the fall of Europe to fascist communist rule, since the actual people responsible are not facing charges or jail. Those people remain free and wealthy, while the lackey gets jack booted.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
More importantly for the public: the golden parachute and engineer's imprisonment does nothing to give affected cars (not just VWs) control of the cars they "own". The car's software should be published, sent to each registered owner in source and binary forms with complete build instructions and licensed under a free software license (I suggest the GPLv3 or later).
This means Brad Kuhn's warning still holds true: Software Freedom Doesn't Kill People, Your Security Through Obscurity Kills People and vehicle owners who want to keep their vehicle and make it abide by emissions laws without having to trust the parties that put them in danger in the first place can't do so. This is near to symbolic punishment in that it's very real for the individual engineer (nothing symbolic about that) but a way for the government and manufacturers say "Look! We're 'Doing Something'!" with no threat to their power to do this again. That power should be taken away from them and turned into freedom for the affected car owners so we can get cleaner air to breathe and verifiable operation out of what might otherwise be perfectly functional vehicles.
Digital Citizen
Jailing the engineer as though he wasn't obeying management... it's amazing how our elites flaunt the perversion of justice, isn't it? I'm ready to opt out of this shitshow, as is every other straight white male who broke the conditioning. Where do we go?
I knew that an engineer would take the rap. Their identity would be all over the source control changes. Unlike the instructions from his superiors which were probably given verbally at meetings whose minutes were accidentally shredded long ago.
Theoretically maybe, but every time the US car manufacturers cheated they got a slap on the wrist at most. Now the first time a foreign manufacturer gets caught breaking rules designed to disadvantage technology US manufacturers cannot build, happens to be the first time US agencies decide to exaggerate everything publicly as much as possible and to take every penny they can. A complete coincidence, I'm sure.
Don't worry about Europe. Those who actually broke the law will end up in jail or with a fine. I would be more worried about the US, which has been sliding towards fascism since the turn of the century and has an irreparably broken legal system.
Sounds like a very tight space
... gives a new meaning to the word "confinement".
FTFY
I have yet to read a logical, infallible defense for arbitrarily jacking up a punishment "to deter others". It doesn't work, and is an abuse of both law and morality. The fools approving of this treatment are the same fools who would cry foul if the barrel were turned against them. Cowards.
[Citation Needed]
Last time I checked, US manufacturers didn't make any diesel cars, but they made plenty of diesel pickup trucks. Meanwhile, VW was making diesel cars, but no pickup trucks. The EPA's diesel regulations applied to diesel cars, but did not apply to diesel pickup trucks. No favoritism there! Uh huh...
Go ahead, let them pull the wool over your eyes. Keep towing that party line, comrade...
No, he was sent to jail because VW lied about it on three separate occasions to US regulators and got caught on discrepancies multiple times over the course of a decade and isn't American.
FTFY. As far as I'm aware no GM, Ford or (Fiat/Daimler) Chrysler executive ever went to jail for decades of cheating and misleading regulators.
It was the final time that the exact nature of their corruption was uncovered and what they got the smackdown for.
Not really true. They got smacked down when they admitted, because the leadership of the various US agencies involved badly needed some high-profile results to offset various failures and because of pressure from lobbyists and politicians to damage foreign competition to the US car manufacturers. VW expected that they would get the same treatment as GM and Ford when they admitted to emissions manipulations behind closed doors. They were wrong...
Last time I checked, US manufacturers didn't make any diesel cars, but they made plenty of diesel pickup trucks.
Ford makes plenty of diesel cars and GM also did until they sold their European branch a few weeks ago. Fiat Chrysler probably sells more diesel cars in Europe than petrol cars. They just don't sell them in the US, because diesel only makes sense economically for large pickup trucks in a market where fuel is almost free and the regulations strongly favour petrol engines, which is probably something the US car makers lobbied for, as is the separate and far weaker set of regulations for pickup 'trucks', including a 25% import tarriff. The whole notion that a pickup would somehow not be a car is something that is alien to someone not from North America, but it is awfully convenient for GM, Ford and the US/Canada branch of Fiat Chrysler.