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Volkswagen Executive Sentenced To Maximum Prison Term For His Role In Dieselgate (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, a U.S. 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 U.S. 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. Instead, Schmidt was sentenced to the maximum penalties outlined in the plea deal. Only one other VW employee has been sentenced in connection with the emissions scandal: former engineer James Liang, who received 40 months in prison and two years of supervised release as the result of his plea deal. Although six other VW Group executives have been indicted, none is in U.S. custody.
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. Instead, Schmidt was sentenced to the maximum penalties outlined in the plea deal. Only one other VW employee has been sentenced in connection with the emissions scandal: former engineer James Liang, who received 40 months in prison and two years of supervised release as the result of his plea deal. Although six other VW Group executives have been indicted, none is in U.S. custody.
I was sexual assaulted by a female coworker. She wore a short skirt to work and had a low cut top on to show a bit of cleavage. As a coworker, I have to endure this sexual suggestive behavior in my work environment. My coworker sexual assaulted me by her choice of clothing. It would be like a man wearing biker shorts in the office that are tight enough to show off my private parts. Nobody would tolerate that behavior, and in the name of equality, she needs to stop sexual assaulting the men in the office with her clothing.
after they architected the 2008 financial crisis, but when they see a bit of extra emissions they claim damages of tens of billions of dollars and put people in jail. The EU should arrest American bankers at any opportunity, to show that the EU can play the same dirty games.
How many people will die from climate change that this contributed to? I suspect the answer is a lot of people will. Why isn't the penalty proportional, something like being executed?
The big fish lose their jobs, but go home to their families and retire in style on their past compensation.
Same old same old. We saw in the US after the financial crash of 2008.
So they cheated, and got punished. But let's be honest. The emissions limits are arbitrary bureaucratic numbers. Giving prison time and huge fines is just another way for the government to say we own your ass, from cradle to grave, no matter if we change the rules, no matter where the line is.
The US is a dictatorship run by bureaucrats and prosecutors. And you are a slave. Doesn't matter which party is in power, doesn't matter who is president, the state rules you. The laws are just a way to snap you back to their version of reality.
I'd like to believe otherwise....but the millions living in US prisons is closing in on the number put into German work camps, prison camps, and extermination camps.
As per this one.
Oliver Schmidt, who was general manager of the engineering and environmental office for VW of America
A regional department manager is not a senior executive. Most sources, including the one /. chose, attempt to imply he was a C*O of VP of something, to make the audience think something meaningful and unprecedented has happened. This guy is middle management. Geographically significant middle management, but in a global company, that's still just middle management.
Germany, and by extension Europe, has over the last decades tried very hard to project an image of a decent, honest, open, rule-bound democracy with integrity, good laws, yada yada yada. Listening to the Germans and Europeans in general, you'd think that its always the U.S. Corporations that are doing horrible things in the name of profit. This has been used very, very successfully to mask the fact that German and other powerful European companies are incredibly aggressive when it comes to making money/profit, especially in developing world markets where they are very strong, and there are no rules for them to play by. Its not just German companies either. The French, Belgians, Dutch and so forth aren't any better. If there is money to be grabbed, they'll grab it, decency and rules be damned. So its not just VW and the other automakers that are doing this sort of stuff. This is a system problem in a European Union that seems "super decent" image-wise, but is anything but in reality. Also, there is no way the German and other European governments didn't know this kind of cheating was happening. They knew, but turned a blind eye to it until there was no hiding it anymore.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
The political left has put itself in a bad position. On one hand it supposedly stands against pollution, and wants to end climate change. Yet on the other hand, we see the exact same people overtly supporting overpopulation in terrible third-world locales like Africa, the Middle East, and India.
Like nearly all consumer-grade vehicles, the vehicles affected by this problem have a limited lifespan due to them being actively used. Perhaps 5 to 10 years in most cases. They'll be replaced soon enough, and any unexpected pollution they may cause will no longer be an issue.
That's not the case when it comes to people. Even in places where the life expectancy is relatively low, it's very typical for a human who survives childhood to live until they're 40 to 60 years old. During this time span, which far exceeds that of a typical vehicle, these humans will consume massive amounts of food and energy, will likely use decades of petrol-powered vehicles of one sort or another, and will generate massive amounts of waste. And we shouldn't forget that these people will in turn likely reproduce 4 to 7 times, exacerbating the environmental impact again and again.
We're currently seeing huge population growth in many regions within Africa, along with the Middle East, and even India to some extent. The birth rates in such areas are far beyond any sustainable level, given how resource-constrained these areas are to begin with. That's why we're already seeing so many of these people flood into civilized areas like Europe and even the Americas.
While they're making a huge fuss over a relatively minor issue with these vehicle emissions, the political left is going out of its way to simultaneously encourage the totally unsustainable population growth in third-world areas. This population growth will cause far more environmental damage than these vehicle emissions.
It's like the political left has their priorities completely backward. They're focused on some of the least-significant and short-term environmental issues, while actively contributing to much larger and more disastrous long-term environmental destruction.
My first thought when I read this was, 7 years for a little pollution but nothing for the crooked bankers that sent the US economy into the toilet in 2008 and then made billions more on the way out.
Well, in the grand scheme of things he is not significant but he was one of the few people the US authorities could get their hands on. The US authorities have filed charges against the higher ups, but Germany will not extradite a citizen to the US over this.
What happened is that this guy made the monumentally stupid decision to go on a vacation to the US, probably thinking that he would be safe because he is no big fish.
...is acquitted.
some jail time for the environutters that predicated all of the anti-car and anti-jobs regulations on this little white lie being true.
How many times in the last decade have Democrats (especially Dems, though not exclusively) been telling us that "all the carmakers support 50MPG CAFE" as "proof" that their environmental regulations weren't bonkers.
Notice Germany and the EU hasn't done a damn thing. And no, "fines" don't count. These people all have plenty of money. Shame on the EU.
2500 - 3000 kg SUV emits more CO2 that a 1300 kg Volkswagen due to the Newton's second law of motion: F = m*a, i.e. Force (fuel) = mass * acceleration
Penalties for white collar crime. Too many time it is just a slap on the wrist.
A co-worker of mine used to be in senior management at VW DE (left more than a decade ago), and he said that the whole thing was utterly unsurprising to him. He said the US management was the worst cross between lickspittle toadies focused only on their personal ladder-climbing and soulless used car salesman willing to say anything regardless of facts.
-Styopa
Although six other VW Group executives have been indicted, none is in U.S. custody.
If they downloaded a crappy song, a SWAT team would have picked them up ages ago.
You'd have to have uploaded it to manage criminal infringement, downloading doesn't cut it.
this cost real money. Worse, there's going to be decades of increased oversight that will cost even more. Somewhere is a billionaire who's net worth is now slightly less. That is not something we stand for in the world. Blood had to be spilled. I'm surprised we stopped here.
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Yay for coerced false confession! American Gulag FTW!
Its good seeing justice serviced... Now how about arresting bankers?
So, you are saying the jury was wrong?
This sentence doesn't even count as a slap on the wrist and nowhere near does serves justice for the damage done. The sentence is roughly that of a single violent crime like a store burglary but this crime harmed society a million-fold worse than petty crime. This was a crime on a global scale that literally harmed the planet itself. Justice should be proportionate to the damage done. In this case, life without parole should be the minimal option. The "fine" here is surely less than this person earned during the same period. And this person's sentence will have them out in 3 years. This is not justice! This is a system that doesn't recognize the impact of the crime. A new category of crime is needed. I propose "megacrimes".
I worked in a manipulative lobbyist think tank.
Free will is such a ridiculous delusion. ALL our behavior is the result of sensory input being mangled by the accumulation of all previous input, which includes epigenes and genes.
People can do what they want, but they can't *want* what they want. But their environment can do something to make them want something!
The more confident somebody is to be free from this, the *easier* it actually is, to do it. Because they are blind to it.
Most childhood memories happened either vastly different or didn't happen at all! Because every time th brain gets input, all the memories are slightly altered too.
It is rather easy, if you are in a position with as much power as a parent or a boss of a media company, to make people see and remember exactly what you want them to see or remember, and then act based on that.
So no, even if you decided to write this comment, that does not mean you were in control at all.
And neither does Schmith have to have been in control. He's simply the last link in the chain (or rather tree/graph), when the entire chain was the cause.
Looking at the peer pressure he received, he was probably less than 20% free. The rest came to him via his chain of command above him.
He wasn't German, or American, or anything. He was *corporate*.
Of a psychopathic international corporation, to be precise.
No matter where you are from, if you happen to be a psychopath, a high position in corporate is the natural place you will end up.
it's about theor gains.
I say if they want this reality-contradicting
newspeak, they have to have ALL of it.
That means eating up another corporation is cannibalism and brutal murder, and the entire corporation comes under state-domination, and is separated from economy for a life sentence.
Let's see how that tastes!
Let's just do a scoping exercise;
1) Is the company at fault a foreign brand?
2) Is the alleged perpetrator foreign, or have a foreign sounding name, or better still a foreign accent?
???
4) Throw the book at him, and possibly make up a few extra books to ensure you really do get him
For what it's worth, the EU hasn't (yet) done too much about this, so it seems they too use much the same score sheet. You'll also note that the same is true of bankers in those two regions too. Something to think about before taking that job to "take our company International", isn't it!?
Trump should go to jail instead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
How much did he make in salary and stock options since the start of his lies?
7 years and TRIPLE damage should be the right amount.
Give me enough money and 7 years in jail works out to a good deal.
The ones who profited the most, are the ones who should be penalized the most.
To whom much is given, much shall be expected.