The first Volkswagen employee to face criminal charges relating to the ongoing diesel emissions scandal has entered a guilty plea.
The Detroit News reported that James Robert Liang, 62, appeared in U.S. District Court on Friday in Detroit to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government to commit wire fraud in violating the Clean Air Act. Liang faces a penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Liang, whose name first appeared in a lawsuit against VW filed in New York State in July, allegedly engineered a diesel emissions defeat device for the Volkswagen Jetta powered by the 2.0-liter TDI engine. He reportedly began developing the device in 2006 and oversaw testing of the device at a Volkswagen facility in California in 2014 and 2015. The Department of Justice report states: “According to Liang’s admissions, when he and his co-conspirators realized that they could not design a diesel engine that would meet the stricter U.S. emissions standards, they designed and implemented software [the defeat device] to recognize whether a vehicle was undergoing standard U.S. emissions testing on a dynamometer or being driven on the road under normal driving conditions, in order to cheat the emissions test. Liang admitted that he used the defeat device while working on the EA 189 and assisted in making the defeat device work.?
The News also reported that Liang was also indicted for violating the Clean Air Act, the penalty for which is a two-year pris...