New Jersey man pleads guilty to nationwide conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act by remotely disabling pollution control devices on diesel trucks
New Jersey man pleads guilty to nationwide conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act by remotely disabling pollution control devices on diesel trucks
Tacoma – A 44-year-old Columbia, New Jersey man pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act for his scheme to interfere with pollution control software on diesel trucks, announced U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman.
According to records filed in the case, Achtemeier conspired with mechanics in garages and operators of truck fleets to disable the anti-pollution software installed on diesel trucks.
Coconspirators who wanted to disable their trucks’ pollution control hardware system—a process commonly known as “deleting”—sought Achtemeier’s help to trick the truck’s software into believing the emissions control systems were still functional, a process known as “tuning.”
Monitoring software on a deleted truck will detect that the pollution control hardware is not functioning and will prevent the truck from running. Achtemeier disabled the monitoring software on his client’s trucks by connecting to laptops he had provided to various coconspirators. Some of the coconspirators would pass the laptop on to others seeking to have the anti-pollution software disabled on their trucks. Once the laptop was hooked up to the truck’s onboard computer, Achtemeier could access it from his computer and tune the software designed to slow the truck if the pollution control device was missing or malfunctioning. Achtemeier could “tune” trucks remotely, which enabled him to maximize his environmental impact and personal profit.
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Sounds like an awful lot of work for... some reason.
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Yeah, someone is going to have to explain to me how $4500 worth of emissions control deletion is worth the money.
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For semi-trucks at least, my cousin (who drives a truck) told me it costs him a lot of money to have the DEF systems on his truck and operate them, and it costs him money he would otherwise be making on his deliveries.
I thought he was an idiot, and hes risking his and everybody else's health around him with his attempts to defeat those systems. (Don't think he was ever successful at it)
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It usually comes with substantially more power, and you don’t have to maintain the def system anymore either.
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Easily. Read my other comment, but this would pay for itself in a single afternoon if you didn't maintain your vehicle and would otherwise get shutdown due to an exhaust failure.
Or if you drive a truck in stop and go traffic, and the filters clogged up early, causing you to delay and let the exhaist system do a cleaning cycle (take 1hr, requires engine running and high throttle.) Etc etc.
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It refunds itself the second you have to replace any of the emission components and if done early you refund it by getting better MPG and not having to spend money on diesel exhaust fluid.
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Money. It’s always money.
From the article:
Achtemeier charged as much at $4,500 per truck for work that often took him two hours or less. Achtemeier advertised his services on social media nationwide, doing business as Voided Warranty Tuning (VWT) or Optimized Ag. Between 2019 and 2022 his company took in more than $4.3 million in gross profits.
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When you run out of DEF or the DPF is clogged, you can't run your truck for more than a brief while. You get half output in a limp-mode to go refill your DEF or have the DPF serviced. DEF is the reactant for the exhaust that makes diesel burn cleaner, but means modern trucks have 2 tanks now. Users hate it, but it cuts emissions massively. Also adds a few grand to the vehicle exhaust system in hardware and sensors and control units. Anyways:
Time = money.
For a commercial or even semi private vehicle if you bypass even one indicent of downtime by doing this is paid for itself.
That said, the DPF is a filter, and can physically clog and cause an exhaust fire if there is no monitoring software. I hope at least this guy had it wait till it was almost critical and then stop, not entirely disable the stop signal. Otherwise there is a serious risk to the vehicle and passengers.
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These systems often cause issues and it may be quite expensive to repair but if you bypass it, it doesn't affect the performance of the vehicle.
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Removing the pollution control equipment and disabling the software results in trucks polluting at 30 to 1,200 times the level of a truck with pollution control systems.
Fuck these people.
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Reduced running costs, ease of maintenance, engine efficiency.
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Diesel engines can be tuned to be 10% more efficient ie better engine performance and better fuel economy if u modify the engine tuning to ignore the environmental tuning requirements that have been forced upon the manufacturers.
as much as this guy sounds like an asshole should ownership not mean u can modify your own property as u see fit?
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as much as this guy sounds like an asshole should ownership not mean u can modify your own property as u see fit?
Not when your actions affect others, no.
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You can modify it how you see fit, but it’s not street legal unless you fit emissions standards
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as much as this guy sounds like an asshole should ownership not mean u can modify your own property as u see fit?
That's kind of what emission standards are, is rules of that. You can modify your legally purchased firearm as you see fit, but if your modifications make it shoot in random directions, you can't use it in a shooting range.
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Trump pardons then nominates him for head of transportation
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Nah, EPA.
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So it's a Captain Planet villain, but dumb.
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Right, a Republican, exactly.
The way they've all reacted to climate change denialism by actively trying to make pollution as bad as possible is wild. Even if the entire world's scientific community was somehow wrong about global warming, shit like this and "rolling coal" would still be terrible for air quality, but these fucknuts apparently don't care as long as they get to "own the libs". This is peak "eating a shit sandwich to force other people to smell your breath" energy.
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It's not an anti environment thing, it's a money saving thing (as in, they don't do it to intentionally harm the environment, it's collateral damage). You spend 4.5k to make your engine reliable for hundreds of thousands of miles instead of having to spend 10k (if you're lucky) every 100k miles to keep it running.
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The antipollution on a diesel engine (at least a big one) essentially reroutes the exhaust back through the engine and reburns it again. Before the antipollution devices were in place it wasn't uncommon for big diesels to get 500,000 miles before they needed to be replaced. Now with the antipollution devices they're getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 100k before they start having problems of significance.
Those engines and their maintenance are expensive as hell. It saves a whole lot more than the $4,500 having that done. It saves them hundreds of thousands of dollars over the long haul.
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or they could run on propane, which doesn't make a whole lot of particulates in the first place and is cheaper anyway
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I actually decided to search this because I thought the whole point of DEF was so trucks wouldn't need to use an EGR like every car does.
Apparently emissions is complicated and expensive lol, so lots of trucks have both.
Newer models however have started creating systems that remove the EGR and instead rely solely on the SCR with a bigger DEF tank and a cleanup catalyst.
I think DEF is still the right direction. Exhaust recycling has a ton of downsides that took car OEMs a while to hack their way around (or give up and plan for 150k mile expectancy).
4,500 for a mod though is still pretty expensive for something you can do yourself. Most of that cost was probably due to it being illegal, not because it's hard to accomplish.
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Are you defending this?
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God I hate comments like this, that are so un charitable. He's giving us more information and context which is important and adds to discussion and here you are trying to start shit.
This happens way too often on here, people providing nuance or a different perspective and some douche sliding in "so you think everyone should DIE?!!!!" putting words into OP's mouth and attributing malice.....
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Explanation is not excuse.
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coconspirators
It's okay to keep the hyphen in there. It's more readable, and also it's once again a word.
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Coco 'nspirators
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Why? Just Why?
I mean sure, there is some money aspect to it, fine.
But why spend all that time and energy just to be able to pollute more. I mean, that is the benefit of more pollution? Even if you don't believe climate change, polluii less shouldn't be that hard to understand as something positive?
I'm just... Not getting this. I'm assuming the guy has a mental illness that would explain this, maybe?
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Tribalism, to own the libs.
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If the "delete" was removing their catalytic convertor and not just reprogramming the ECU then there is a mild to moderate performance increase caused by reducing exhaust pressure. If it's easier to push the exhaust out then there's more power going to the wheels.
If it's just ECU changes it's probably related to the air/fuel mixture it's using. Often douchebags will hack this to "roll coal" but changing this can give you increased horsepower at the expense of emissions.
As someone whose car has a tune but still passes emissions inspections, this guy is both bad at tuning cars and also an asshole.
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Believe it or not there is a subset of the far right who vehemently believe we are ruining the atmosphere but not pumping ENOUGH carbon into it.
It's a weird reverso climate change belief. These people blame all the historic hurricanes, wildfires and changing temperature on the completely unfounded idea that humans are limiting their CO2 output.
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Remotely? Sounds like the manufacturers are up to no good as well.
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The summary says he was having accomplices connect a laptop to the vehicle and then remotely accessing that laptop. Sounds like regular old ssh or rdp.
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I'd bet he's a TeamViewer kind of guy.
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If you read the article he was remotely connecting to laptops that were plugged into the vehicles.
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Manufacturers try really hard to stop their proprietary software from getting out into the world, because when it does this is exactly what happens.
Case in point: I have a $35 phone app that lets me change software configurations on my BMW, and it is great. Can't change anything related to engine, aftertreatment, or safety though...which is a good thing.
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Flipside of this coin: this results in repair monopolies because users cannot repair their own vehicles and equipment and manufactures use this exact excuse to claim they HAVE to run a monopoly cause the EPA. Literally John Deere has said this.
In truth, illegal vehicle mods have been and will always be a thing. Manufacturers should still provide all the tools to users to repair, and emissions checks on trucks will have to be smarter to catch cheaters. Make the penalty for a deliberate violation (willful not accidental) so egregious that no one would consider it, even if it saved 50k+ per truck.
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Most cars come equipped with a sim card these days and there's lots of news about how car companies are sending data about your driving habits to insurance providers. So um.... Yeah.
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The ultimate "own the Libs" conspiracy.