- Rudy Performance Parts sold over 250,000 products to remove or disable emissions control systems.
- The company had sold software devices and offered mechanical modifications to customers.
- Prosecutors say it generated $33 million in revenue while violating the Clean Air Act.
A performance shop in North Carolina has agreed to pay $10 million in criminal fines and civil penalties for manufacturing, selling, and installing devices designed to remove or disable emissions control systems on diesel vehicles.
Rudy Performance Parts and owner Aaron Rudolf pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act as part of a criminal case and will be fined $2.4 million and forced to complete a three-year period of organizational probation. Prosecutors discovered he had tampered with monitoring devices on approximately 300 diesel trucks. He was also hit with a $600,000 criminal fine. However, this just scratches the surface.
Read: Gorilla Performance Fined $1M For Diesel Truck Emissions Defeat Device, Owner Faces Jail Time
In a separate civil suit filed on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the U.S. Justice Department, it was revealed that for many years, Rudy Performance Parts had been selling defeat devices to pickup truck owners. Rudolf had been selling delete devices that tampered with the ODB systems of trucks. These devices, known as the Mini Maxx, were manufactured by another company and also offered available along with the XRT Pro defeat device, produced by the same firm, referred to as Company A in the suit.
After Company A shut up shop and stopped producing these devices, Rudy Performance Parts conspired with others to create imitation devices. Between July 2015 and December 2016, a software technician was employed to convert existing tuners into imitation defeat devices. Rudy’s later manufactured them in-house after paying $850,000 for a laptop with special software that imitated the devices from Company A. From December 2016 to July 2018, the shop is said to have sold approximately 43,900 imitation tuners, generating $33 million in revenue.
All told, the civil lawsuit claims that from at least 2014 through to mid-2019, the shop and its owner manufactured and sold over 250,000 products to remove or disable emissions controls. In addition to software-based devices, these included plates to block a truck’s exhaust gas recirculation system and pipes to replace pollution treatment components in the exhaust system.
Under a consent decree filed July 29, Rudy Performance Parts and Rudolf will pay a $7 million civil penalty. The EPA estimates the number of products sold by the shop amounted to adding over 1 million vehicles’ worth of pollution to America’s roads.
