Matthew Geouge raked in $10 million for selling the devices which made trucks produce hundreds of times more pollution, prosecutors said.
A North Carolina truck mechanic was sentenced to a year in prison for selling thousands of devices that allowed truck owners to bypass emissions-control systems and produce hundreds of times more pollution than is legally allowed.
Matthew Sidney Geouge, 35, of Hendersonville, N.C., pleaded guilty last year to violating the Clean Air Act and tax evasion. In addition to the prison term, Geouge was also ordered to pay $1.3 million in fines to the EPA, and $1.2 million in back taxes and penalties. “[Geouge] tailored software programs for the tuners known as ‘tunes,’ designed to maximize the engine power of particular vehicles resulting in significant increases in harmful air emissions,” according to federal prosecutors in North Carolina.
The EPA estimates there are as many as 550,000 medium trucks on the road in the U.S. that have had their emissions controls tampered with. They have estimated that the additional pollution created by those trucks is equivalent to the emissions produced by 9 million trucks operating in compliance with the law.
Three of Geouge’s co-conspirators had previously pleaded guilty and been sentenced to three years of probation and six months of home confinement.
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