The IT Nerd

Volkswagen engineer James Liang apparently co-operated with the feds when it came to his role in the DieselGate scandal as well as having admitted his guilt when it came to his role in the scandal. His “reward” for that? It according to Reuters is 40 months in jail and a $200K fine. The latter being more than what prosecutors asked for. Why so harsh? Try this reason on for size:

[U.S. District Court Judge Sean] 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.

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.”

I think you can safely say that the book has been thrown at this guy. Though he was facing five years in jail which makes this result a bit of a discount. But he was not the mastermind behind this mess. A guy by the Oliver Schmidt is next up to be sentenced. He’s a VW exec who was much further up the food chain. Thus if this guy got 40 months, Schmidt could get that or more.

This entry was posted on August 28, 2017 at 11:43 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Volkswagen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.