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Yes, he's guilty but get the rest of the crooks too.

This brings Enron to mind. Yes the accountants did all the bookkeeping and they are guilty but the fraud was run from the executive suite.

What this guy did was a result of what the executives wanted not the initiator. Not just that, it went on and on and on...

To me, it's irritating that the 1st person to make the news is the engineer when clearly he's just part of the scandal. He probably had the least to spend on attorneys so he was the first to fall.

The 2008 financial crisis destroyed millions of hard workings people's retirement savings, jobs, and recent college graduates hopes of finding a job. No one went to jail over that. This is clearly a case of someone not having the right lawyers and political connections as engineers are people who actually create value as is often the case they can be successful without those two.

Neoliberal ideology makes the claim that prison is necessary to dissuade working class people from committing crimes. Whereas embarrassment and the tort system is sufficient for dissuading the management classes. Since we live in a neoliberal system it stands that this guy will go to jail and his bosses will perhaps pay fines.

You can't be serious? Are you!? please tell me that you have a source.

That's an entirely reasonable summary of the prevailing economic ideology in the US. Res ipsa loquitur.

Don't you see the news?? Check for any scandal, there is your source.

I'm serious actually. Some references to Richard Posner (Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit)

https://books.google.com/books?id=A7IRDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA186&lpg=...

http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/Hylton_crimec...

Just a note to say your second link gives me a "Oops! That page can’t be found." page.

#$%$!

http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/ Hylton_crimecon.pdf

If you take a look at the second link URL, it is just doubly concatenated -- just delete the second copy, and it works just fine.

The work cited appears to be http://ius.bg.ac.rs/prof/Materijali/jovmio/DS_PrimeriMetodol...

Are YOU serious? Have you been paying attention?

If an individual is found guilty of money laundering for a drug cartel they go to jail forever. When a bank does it they get fined (HSBC).

I think his incredulity was that anyone openly holds this opinion (I was surprised myself), not that this is how things work in practice.

Very well put mister.

How is that surprising? I don't understand. Prison sentences work as dissuasion. How else can you send a message to people to not commit those crimes?

Not saying it's a good solution, but it's one way to prevent crime.

I think you only read the first sentence in the comment (which really ought to end with a comma rather than a period).

Who exactly should've gone to jail over the 2008 financial crisis? Something bad having happened does not automatically mean that someone did something wrong.

And "something wrong" and "something illegal" are not always the same.

People don't like to hear it, but some of the biggest perpetrators were lower level employees at mortgage mills that were lying on mortgage applications and putting false information on them to get them approved. While in some cases it may be that the executives were specifically instructing employees to lie on this way, most likely they were just being far too overzealous and putting too much pressure on the employees.

Additionally, people who lied on their mortgage applications were also to blame.

Then of course at the top on the securities side, there were those that knew about these shady practices but went ahead anyway. So ya, some execs should be on jail probably, but even more low level sales guys and sub prime borrowers should as well.

If you are going to do something risky and you are smart, you will usually, from the start, hedge your bets and plan for failure. It's just good practice. And it's not done by giving instructions to the person, but by selecting the right person with the right values, skill set and intentions for the job, so there is no paper trail and plausible deniability.

In this case just as with Jerome Kerviel, the fall guy story has to be believable when you dig, so that he can take the heat and the people responsible for setting up the system within which he operated, the people who took the decision to promote him and give him the resources to create the problem, walk away scots-free.

For example, newspapers receive thousands of pieces from hundreds of writers, the way the editorial line is kept is not with the editor telling the writers "we want you to stick to these positions and PR this line", but by the editor picking the writers who happen to really believe in the positions they want to promote on that day. Then he can say "conspiracy theories! of course we don't tell our writers what to write! this is totally independent journalism!". The editor is absolutely responsible for the editorial line and positions of the paper and by judicious selection can absolutely act in the interests of his backers/shareholders/directors, without asking his journalists to corrupt their standards.

What about this would back your claim that he isn't a fall guy? Whether he exclusively decided to cheat or not, there are still people that could have stopped him. This is for media attention. It might be VW or it might be someone else that is making this "scandal" go on. Besides, VW itself is a fall guy; other companies are also doing some odd stuff: http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a29293/v...

Individual engineers don't make product decisions at big companies like Volkswagen. When I worked as an engineer at a big company, I couldn't even use a different text editor.

"James Robert Liang, leader of diesel competence for VW"

He's not an individual engineer, he was a team lead from the sound of it. Also, your experience "at a big company" has no relevance here.

"Leader of diesel competence" -- that sounds like one of those generated Silicon Valley job titles you get off of:

http://siliconvalleyjobtitlegenerator.tumblr.com/

It turns out "VW almost exclusively promotes their engineers to managers."

"NO2 hacker"

Well technically...

How long until he got promoted to "N2O hacker"?

= P.L.E.A.S.E

His responsibility is probably above zero, but I'm having a hard time decisions of this kind aren't reviewed by many peers across company layers. Unless he lied about the purpose of his work and nobody could decipher his claims... still odd (reminds me of the Kerviel bank fraud)

If he lied about his work, and none else caught it, it brings up other questions about the integrity of VW vehicles. e.g. How valid are their safety testing results (could someone in the org have submitted vehicles for crash tests that weren't representative of the production config?)

Yes - maybe engineer doing air-bags is doing the same. And also brakes... so on. These engineers are not to be trusted: we need more management oversight.

No one person should be responsible for a safety-critical feature of a vehicle. It's not about management, it's about single points of failure.

This even sounds somewhere between 2 to 3 levels above team lead. As a team [lead] in automotive you are mostly only responsible for a very small part of the system, and "diesel competence" sounds more strategic. Although titles are often manager, senior manager and then director of something, so it's hard to tell what leader is. But I guess it's far more an executive position with > 200 people below than an an "actual engineer".

He is not an exec, he does not make corporate decissions.

"Papa" sees and makes all the decisions in a German Company.

I don't think he's innocent, but I think there were others much higher-up than he was that were aware of this and actively contributed in the fraud.

Also, didn't VW do this in Europe, too? Are we to believe this guy in the U.S. is responsible for the emissions cheating in Europe, too? At the very least top EU execs would've been aware of it, even if he was the creator and the evangelist for the device.

As far as the U.S. federal government goes, I doubt we'll see anyone else charged. They've already settled with VW, and this guy taking the fall was likely part of the settlement. We may still see some states continue their cases against VW, but I wouldn't be surprised if the DoJ pressures them to drop their cases.

"Also, didn't VW do this in Europe, too? Are we to believe this guy in the U.S. is responsible for the emissions cheating in Europe, too?"

Yes, this is the guy responsible for Europe too. Check out the justice.gov story I linked in parent for richer summary:

- He was an employee in Germany from 1983 - 2008

- He led the effort when he realized they couldn't engineer an engine to meet US standards in 2006

- He moved to the USA in 2008 and furthered the fraud as "Leader of Diesel Competence"

When your boss asks you to move to another nation in order to break that nation's laws, just say "no".

It requires quite some will power, because it means you're fired. So depending on your situation, that may a really tough decision to make; even though you absolutely understand that you're doing something wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

He is exactly the fall guy. Just a target for public persecution. The really responsible execs will get away as usual. Nothing to see the bad guy it's punished time to Move on.

If there are other people responsible, there is no reason for him to not talk...

no reason to not talk .... that we know of.

there are many ways to shut someone up... Do you want to keep your family's life style? your kids at private school? your house? your car? then stay quiet. we will lawyer you up, you get a reduced sentence, will be out for good behavior in two years and we will keep you as a consultant with full pension and company benefits...just one theoretical scenario :)

many ways to influence someone in this materialistic world..

> This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea:

Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain ... um ... sure.

I really don't understand why this guy is signing a plea deal. This is a classic example of a case complicated enough that the jurors would almost certainly be unable to come to "beyond a reasonable doubt" (the standard for criminal charges in the US).

I wonder what's really going on.

> Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain

Even with a slam dunk, prosecutors usually prefer a plea bargain. They have limited budgets, trials are expensive, and if you can get a guilty plea with an agreement on an acceptable sentence and get the defendant and a judge to sign off without the time and expense of a trial, that's a big win.

(And, if they were likely to lose at trial, its also a big win for the defendant where they aren't indigent and are paying for the defense out of their own pocket -- a plea deal is cheaper than a trial, and may get them a substantially better outcome in sentencing.)

I think you're right but I hate that "better outcome" means "harsher sentence" rather than "more accurate trial outcome."

In the US, 97% of federal cases and 94% of state cases are plea bargained.

Trial by jury is only common in TV dramas today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/stronger-hand-for-judge...

I'd believe it.

A couple of years ago when I sat for jury duty, during one of my last call-ins as it was, we'd been in the pool room for a good hour or so precisely because of the statistics you cite. The bailiffs were getting a bit antsy and kept leaving the room, only to return a few minutes later to answer questions from a few impatient jurors. As it turned out, there were something on the order of about 7 trials on the docket scheduled for that day, and the first 3 or 4 had already ended with a plea bargain by that point rather late in the morning. We were told they would usually schedule between 7 to 10 trials on average because most of the defendants would usually agree to a deal. They assured us we would be going to juror selection "soon" and went about their business.

The unusual thing was that the remaining trials also ended in a deal, and after staying for ~2+ hours, we were free to go. Out of my 3 months, I only ever sat on one trial but we did get called in quite a few times. I certainly didn't expect to be turned away because none of the scheduled trials actually went to trial.

As an aside, I had an opportunity at the end of my term to speak with one of the prosecutors (I was leaving my last session at the end of my term and ran into him in the parking lot as he was getting lunch) who expressed frustration with the drug laws for wasting taxpayer money and jurors' time. Very interesting discussion.

I think he is high enough to be guilty but still a low level that he cannot "lawyer up".

So he seems a perfect person to push for plea bargain so they can build a good case against people actually responsible for this. At least I hope they will try to do that.

But, cynic in me says that this is the end: they will claim this multi-billion dollar scam was architected, coordinated, and executed by him and only him. Move on.

He can be 100% complicit and guilty and also a fall guy, if he was acting on orders from a higher-up who goes unpunished.

If all of this is true...then what was the motive? Just to save his own job? Seems like a lot for someone to do just to save a job.

Probably a company culture that rewards excellence even when it's unethical. If you are driven to impress & succeed in an environment like this, stuff like this happens.

He might have been pressured... just like the employees in the recent story about Well's Fargo.