A North Carolina auto parts shop owner must pay $10 million after he manufactured, sold and installed emissions defeat devices on hundreds of diesel trucks.
Aaron Rudolf, who owns Rudy’s Performance Parts in Burlington, agreed to pay the criminal fines and civil penalties after pleading guilty to conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act. Rudolf previously pleaded guilty to installing defeat devices on some 300 trucks.
The Justice Department, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, filed a civil lawsuit against Rudolf and his company in 2022 for violating the Clean Air Act by manufacturing, selling and installing defeat devices. Rudolf and his company will pay a $7 million civil penalty for those actions, a $600,000 criminal fine for installing defeat devices on trucks, and a $2.4 million criminal fine.
“Defeat devices, such as those sold by Rudy’s, can lead to pollution at high levels that pose health risks and harm the environment,” Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement. “This plea agreement and civil settlement show that we will take strong action to enforce the Clean Air Act and emissions controls requirements for motor vehicles.”
The EPA in 2016 requested information from Rudolf about products his company sold that affected emissions. The company provided incomplete information to the agency, federal court records say. The EPA requested information again in 2018, but Rudy’s told the agency it did not maintain the records the agency sought.
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According to the complaint, Rudy’s advertised the selling of “EGR Delete Kits” on its company website and eBay. The products advertised the ability to interfere with the exhaust gas recirculation system. That system, according to DieselNet.com, is used to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. The lawsuit claims the company sold over 250,000 products designed to remove or disable EPA-mandated emissions controls.
The company also manufactured imitation delete tuners using a laptop that cost $850,000, the lawsuit says. In total, the company sold 43,900 imitation tuners, generating about $33 million in revenue.
“For too many years, companies like Rudy’s have installed illegal defeat devices to evade the public health protections of the Clean Air Act, to the detriment of communities across America,” Assistant Administrator David M. Uhlmann of EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance said in a statement. “[This] announcement demonstrates that EPA will vigorously pursue criminal and civil penalties until this blatant illegal behavior comes to an end.”