VW Engineer Pleads Guilty in U.S. to Diesel Emission Cheating

A veteran Volkswagen engineer in the U.S. has been indicted and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud for helping the company cheat on diesel emission tests, Bloomberg News reports.

It’s the first criminal charge stemming from a U.S. Dept. of Justice investigation into the scandal that began a year ago. VW has admitted it installed so-called defeat devices in 11 million diesels since 2006.

James Liang was indicted by a grand jury and entered his guilty plea today in a federal court in Detroit. He has agreed to cooperate with the continuing probe, which is likely to put new pressure on higher-ranking executives at VW.

Bloomberg says Liang started at VW in Germany decades ago and was part of the team there that developed the company’s 2.0-liter “EA 189” diesel at the center of the scandal.

A lawsuit filed in July by New York state’s attorney general in July claims Liang was directly involved in developing cheater software for the engine that enabled it to pass emission tests but grossly exceed those limits on the road. The New York lawsuit says Liang worked at a VW facility in California in 2014-2015 to help conceal the defeat device from regulatory agencies.