In exchange for a fee of up to $4,500 per truck, a New Jersey man was able to remotely reconfigure heavy-duty diesel truck engines allowing company drivers to bypass federal pollution-control regulations.
He now faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Jonathan Achtemeier pled guilty in a Washington state federal court on Wednesday, admitting that between 2019 and 2022 he removed the pollution control software on hundreds of trucks from around the country.
Defeating emission controls can boost engine performance and improve fuel economy – at the expense of emitting more pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that removing 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. Tampering with the systems is a violation of the Clean Air Act.
According to court documents, Achtemeier, 44, advertised his services on social media nationwide, doing business as Voided Warranty Tuning (VWT), based in Columbia, New Jersey.
Records filed in the case revealed that Achtemeier conspired with five truck fleet operators and garage mechanics to disable the anti-pollution software. Two of Achtemeier’s co-conspirators based in Washington state worked for trucking companies that owned fleets of 2016 and 2017 model-year diesel trucks manufactured by Freightliner and Peterbilt.
The coconspirators sought Achtemeier’s services to trick their trucks’ software into believing the systems were still working, a process known as “tuning,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement. The process could take less than an hour per truck.
“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.”
Between 2019 and 2022, VWT made more than $4.3 million.
U.S. District Judge Tiffany Cartwright scheduled sentencing for Feb. 14, 2025.