Shop Owner Sentenced, EPA Update!

what is going on diesel nation we're excited to have you guys with us today on the diesel podcast today's episode is gonna be a follow-up to one we did last month with a diesel shop owner who was talking about what it was like to be um raided by the epa and charges that were filed he's had his sentencing so he's going to tell us today what he was sentenced to and then everything that progressed from the last episode to this one so we're really excited i appreciate him reaching out to us to be able to tell a story and update all of you guys before we get to it though i want to remind you guys if you want to save 20 off site-wide and get some really cool gear kershaw knives is a sponsor of the podcast they have a um a ton of different things whether you need something for hunting fishing edc around the house or job site and we appreciate them offering the code to our our listeners so just go to kershaw.kia usa.com and use code diesel20 to get 20 off site-wide all right let's get to today's episode with michael and getting an update on his sentencing from his epa case michael welcome back to the diesel podcast you had told me that hey i got an update for you guys and last episode we did i know that a lot of people heard it and listened to it and so i wanted to uh to chat with you today and and see what's new or what's transpired since we chatted last week sure yeah absolutely i'd love to do an update uh got of course some uh new information and uh now you know i've gone through the sentencing hearing the final you know kind of chapter there is closed out so um you know it'd be nice to get some information out there and say hey this is what you guys can expect and you know now that i have a little more freedom to maybe answer some questions that i had to be a little cautious of last time what um well how did that whole process go what uh what happened with it yeah so uh had the final sentencing hearing um basically long story short uh just like pretty much any of these other cases where they're going through this you know you get offered a deal at some point um and we did you know myself and the other two business partners were offered the same deal what i can tell you is one thing that i don't think a lot of people fully understand is that deal is also subjective to the final stamp of that judge um so in my ex my case for example the judge added two years of probation to the deal she added six months of house arrest and 180 hours of community service um so in the full scope of things you know we're looking at five years probation you know six months house arrest 180 hours community service plus uh you know 66k and fines which should be all public knowledge you should be able to look this up on the case you know i don't know if the epa has published it but it should all be there wow so that um i i i didn't know that and it's so hard to get information on this kind of stuff like we chatted about before it's like normally you just see you know an update online or something i think they do publish um you know some of the things so that's that's um you know that's really interesting so like overall you know how did it go the way that you you had hoped or what were your thoughts what are your thoughts now looking back on it well i i can tell you so now that you know like i said i have a little more freedom to say um it somewhat went the way i was kind of expecting um what i can tell you is in the sense that there is a law right that we have to basically not violate it's very black and white um you know people might be upset about me saying that or saying hey you know it's it's but the truth is it's black and white there's a law you don't have to like it you don't have to agree um but if you don't agree the best analogy i can say is this is like you speeding on the highway right highway says hey it's 65 you go 75 because you don't agree it should be 65 you get pulled over you get a ticket you get pissed off at the cop and say hey uh you know this is i don't agree with this well that's nice it's still a law you broke it here's the consequence um but we can get into the other side of things right um as auto enthusiasts as motorsports enthusiasts obviously we don't necessarily agree with the way things are going right there's there's lots of stuff i mean there's rumors out there from all kinds of stuff politicians being involved on different sides of things not just the epa side but on you know the side of owning certain businesses i mean there's all kinds of rumors right um i can tell you from my personal experience what i can tell you is um you know it's it's interesting that the way they play it um in the public side of the case i i'm not sure how but you should be able to look up transcripts from from the court case so this should all be public knowledge the u.s attorney prosecutor straight up said that well while they're making their case to the judge the term was used i quote most of these deleted trucks are driven on highways near low-income communities predominantly of for people of color okay so now we get into a whole other thing right i mean this is this isn't something i made up i mean like i said transcripts should be available i don't know how to look them up but this was on the public side of the hearing right so this wasn't the sealed side um so here's this is where we start getting into more the gray area of like okay this is really what's going on right there they're going to do whatever they can to make this happen um my attorney pushed for zero time the probation officer pushed for zero time they said look you know there's been no cases out there where people observed any sort of jail time per the judge's words we are going to start making examples out of cases like this because obviously people haven't got it and that's when the six months of house for us adding the two years probation and 108 hours of community service came in um by the way let's also add that um the minimum for the classification of this felony uh assuming you don't have any credit for cooperation assuming you don't have any credit for doing anything the minimum for this classification of felony is recommended at 10 months by the u.s attorney's office behind bars wow so that that's the minimum recommendation plus whatever fines right now now of course this is where we come into the judge has the final sams okay but this is where you start having to look at it right i mean people people it's easy for people to say stuff right they've maybe gone through this stuff on the civil side but when it used to be nothing but civil or people enthusiasts of different backgrounds you know whether they're a mechanic whether they're a shop owner that hasn't gone through this whether they're a customer right it's easy for them to say stuff but but here's the thing that i have to now look at right now i've got six months where my life is work home but that's the only two options i got right and i'm getting put in the same classification as somebody that got busted for dealing drugs or weapons or you know violent crimes over the exhaust systems right over the the violating the clean air act over this stuff right so this is the severity of it right and this is i guess i tried to portray this a little bit more in a politically correct thing you know format before we don't have to agree with it but there's a way to go about fighting you know getting involved in politics getting involved in everything that we can as enthusiasts where we're all stepping up and we're saying hey what's going on isn't right you know what we don't like the fact that you know this is going on okay then we have to change the law right simply violating the law doesn't change anything right it creates situations like mine where you know i gotta rely on you know i believe i can go to the grocery store and medical necessities for myself and you know family members and um i haven't had the actual probation meeting so there may be other freedoms that are allotted but you got to think about that i mean 600 months of house arrest right i mean like i said it's the same classification as somebody that was dealing drugs and you know that affects my life you know it doesn't affect the customer that that you know we installed um the the fines that are that are based off of a gross amount and they have some formula that they take this and that and they do all these calculations and yada yada okay well that's fine but truly you know by the time you break it down you really didn't make much money and you're usually paying far more than you made in a lot of cases now you know i know early days you know civil stuff was totally different but now when you break down what an individual is responsible for not a business you know an individual you know i mean it's a whole different ballgame now i saw a comment on uh on youtube on on i believe it was your episode but somebody had said well the epa can't make laws and can't enforce fines and what you're telling me right now is the complete opposite in reality and i think that's the part that i i just wish i hope people listen and they understand that there are real repercussions and what you just mentioned that you're dealing with it's not you know it's not just um you know you go into some meetings get a letter in the mail you got to change your business and that's it like it's real stuff well yeah and i mean going back on that is i think the problem is the epa so many people look at the epa as just like a government body that that has suggestions of how to do emissions right that's not the case i mean they are a governing body they can propose stuff they're right they they can't change laws but when all this stuff gets voted on and when all this stuff gets passed through nobody's paying attention because it's snuck into you know this bill or that bill and all this stuff and like i said the corruptness or however you want to put it you know the stuff that's going on i mean look at the stuff you know my wife almost lost it when the the u.s attorney prosecutor made that comment right like what does that have to do with that right and and i have you know that that's the thing and then they want to bring up cancer they want to bring up you know asthma and try to make this thing sound so severe that you're you're killing people by doing these beliefs i mean this is the image that they portray okay and and quite frankly i brought up to the judge i said okay great well you want to talk about cancer my dad has stage four cancer that he's fighting right now okay great my son was a study case for one of the top children's hospitals in washington dc because of the severity of his asthma you really think that i wanted to hurt them you really think that was my intention and and i got told by the judge basically look we your personal matters don't matter right that's not that's not the point right so on one side we're being told they're bringing up trying to make this personal right on on one side saying hey this is how personal it is because you're killing people i mean so it settles in people's lungs and we have all these studies and this and that but then when i brought up hey you know okay that's that's nice but what about the studies that were done that the epa uh their own mechanic when they rated us by the way uh which i have the other business owners can attest to this um admitted that these systems fail okay so how much of this this pollution is being done by systems that are failing you know not even deletes right because you look at about majority of trucks and you're not talking a vast majority of trucks but they they've got all these crazy numbers that you know oh each truck that's deleted it's it's one million tons worth of soot that gets the you know deposited over the lifetime of the the vehicle so you know we have to factor that and and they're going off the assumption of these vehicles are on the road for x amount of years they're they're driven in this this environment that environment oh you know in alaska they're idled all the time because they're cold you know in the cold in the winter time so they're running all the time and then we're we're driven on on the highways well we all know the fact of the matter is is most trucks that stay on the highways don't have the problems it's the trucks that are stop and go that don't get work that don't you know what i'm saying and you're talking a small majority of these trucks that are actually having these issues and so when they bring this up and they start trying to hit you on all this they make it personal right they try to make it personal they try to make you sound like like a criminal like i said i mean it is literally you know the the stuff that was being said was to me was like oh okay you know that's how we're going about this okay you know so it's like i said i mean i mean yeah the epa can enforce laws necessarily they they can't create laws but they can make the proposal to pass them through and then while we're all sleeping because it got snuck into whatever bill it gets passed you know yeah they may not be able to necessarily enforce it but they can come in they can do the investigation they can turn everything over they do have the power to do investigations and to turn it over the u.s attorney and then the u.s attorney looks at it purely from an aspect of once again what is your relation to violating this law they don't care about the personal stuff they don't look you violated a law that's what it comes down to that's all the us attorney and all the judge looks at wow this is uh there's a lot here and um you know i i think that was one of the main takeaways from our last episode when when we chatted was just how how the the epa the government the courts look at this particular issue and it made a lot of sense the way you described it um but i guess to hear how it's progressed through sentencing and the you know kind of aftermath of it is it's just it's almost shocking i guess it would be the word i would use for it is is shocking right um yeah i i mean that's that's that's just it right i and i think the last episode i brought up hey all these other potential issues right but but now it gets even more real okay now now it gets into the fact of well now you're putting extra strain on your family because you're on house arrest right so so here's here's the reality right in a lot of cases is that going to affect uh you know a lot of things well possibly not right there's you know i got a good wife we can work around that you know the kids i mean so what we have some movie nights at home with the kids now instead you know for about six months you know um it's going into winter time up here anyway so we're not going out fishing and camping and stuff anyways right um you know but there is stuff that you got to think about with that right things that we take for granted that people don't think about okay but what about you know the fact that me and my wife try to go on on a weekly date right like it and here's the thing i mean we don't necessarily go out and spend a bunch of money sometimes it's free right sometimes it's a walk on a beach sometimes it's whatever but i'm not doing that for the next six months yeah you know i'm not doing any of this stuff for the next six months you know the the the hey you know late at night oh let me run to the store to get the kids a gallon of milk for for cereal in the morning or you know me and the wife for watching a movie and oh we really want some snacks at one o'clock in the morning you know let's run up to the store that's a mile away and go you know grab some yeah that's that's not happening right i mean there's all this other stuff that affects your personal life now that like i said i mean it's really easy for everybody to have an opinion until they live it you know um and that's that's the reality of it is you you know i don't i don't necessarily agree with a lot of stuff you know even when you know i talked to my father about the situation after the court case and he's like well you know he gets riled up he's an older gentleman so of course you know he's really into politics and and he's you know getting all riled up but i but i said but what does that do what are you fighting right now right we have to fight to change the law we have to fight to to change the way these things are operating fighting because we don't agree with something that was said right even in the courtroom like doesn't really make a difference you know fighting because we don't agree with the law it doesn't make a difference you have to change the law itself you have to change everything at its core you know we have to find ways to adapt we have to find ways to work around the laws that are there and and not just say okay well i don't like this so i'm gonna you know i'm gonna violate this you know as a customer well i don't i think it's dumb you know because i want to do whatever i want with my truck great so what are you doing to change the law you know because like i said going back to the speed limit thing you don't agree with driving 65 on the freeway or 55 because you're like oh man this is really slow okay what are you doing to change it other than complaining that's really the key and that's i think the power of what you're saying about this whole situation it's it's true and it's really the question i i ask uh you know the industry or myself or you know with anything pertaining to this is what are we doing and i know there's some things with the rpm act and other stuff but specifically we're not talking about race vehicles in this application we're not talking about the ability to take an old truck and you know race it we're talking about how your life's affected a bunch of other people and that's that's really the key is what you know how are we getting involved in the process are we talking about it are we um you know talking with our representatives what what are we actually doing sure yeah i mean exactly i mean it's exactly that you know and and you know that's the thing i mean we can go back and forth right there's always this political divide about this president that president this party that party but okay look at look at what's been going on with the epa right it's been going on through multiple different presidencies right it's been going on uh uh i don't care what side of defense you are on what politics you believe in it's been going on through presidents that sat on both sides of the political party right i i mean it so it really doesn't make a difference like there there's it's not necessarily about you know okay well if i do this right like what are we doing to prevent this stuff you know and it goes i mean even deeper you know the um we just got notification i mean most manufacturers are getting away from v8s of any kind right chrysler dodge they've been one of the big ones that's like trying to fight till the very end we finally got that notification you know um that not long ago they're done next year's it there's no more v8s you know so so what are we doing to change that right like you either adapt and you work with the guidelines you're given or you work to change it but what i see so much of is everybody wants to have an opinion and say which is fine we're all entitled to our opinion but when you get so flustered and uppity and say well i don't agree with this so i'm not going to follow that okay well there's consequences for that right you know when the judge asked me you know she said well why did you do it right that was a question i got asked why did you do it my intent wasn't to add to cancer right my intent wasn't to add to asthma like i said i have a personal connection with that stuff everything this prosecutor prosecutor's bringing up i said i don't think that they know anything about that i said they want to bring this up and use this against me so they have no idea you know more than likely what they're even talking about yeah you know um and you could tell even when they're they're bringing it up and the way they went about it tried to describe a tuning device and a this to that and and the other they don't know what they're talking about but it goes back to that core was a law violated um you know like i said the judge asked me why did you do this well this wasn't my intent to do all of this but we all have a passion right right we all have and quite frankly like i said before i probably lost money just on on the delete side of things over the years i guarantee you we lost money right but it wasn't about doing deletes it wasn't about trying to violate a law it wasn't it was the the community right and at the time this is just what people did right there was no real explanation of okay well the emissions doesn't work so we yank it off that's that's what we're doing right there was no real progression it was just hey we're just gonna scrap this and we're gonna be done like that's the mindset that diesel industries had for years yeah and obviously that that was the wrong one to have as we can tell you know so it's uh it's really interesting because sometimes covering this topic we we catch you know flak for it too and it'll be maybe not necessarily public but you know places have said or people have said why are you talking about this why are you having people on to discuss this this isn't what we want to portray we don't want this out in front of people and i'm like we need to have it in front of people because it is affecting every single it's not just affecting you it's affecting what's on website which i've looked at tons of different ones there used to be pages and pages and pages of parts and now it's down to one or two so it's affected what as a truck owner you can buy and it's also you know it's just a current topic and you know before the podcast you said man that last episode we did it it riled some people up so that's why i wanted to kind of segue into that is what kind of feedback did you have after we chatted the episode was out there you know what did you hear you know i haven't heard a whole lot um i heard rumors from a couple different sources actually telling me that that people were pissed off because i tried to make the issue very black and white right and and um the i i was told that it's dealing with the epa is in black and white navigating a court case i guess is never as black and white as we'd hoped you know especially in the current environment that we live in but it is black and white like i said in the sense of it's a law right and that was kind of the thing is that people got riled up right i heard feedback about oh you know yeah this is you know i totally agree with you but but this is really messed up what they're doing yeah yeah it is like you said i mean you know we we we allowed stuff to happen nobody cared to pay attention until it was too late right i mean think when you really think about it this was a civil case right like when when h s for those that remember hms right when they they were one of the first to go through this or even edge right like edge was doing delete tuners people forget that like i think 0809 right some of these companies were the first to go through this and nobody paid attention other than saying well this sucks we're just gonna find a way around it right like that was everybody's mindset we're gonna find a way to skirt the law so we get to this point where finally in 2020 the the government says okay enough is enough civil fines aren't working hitting people with penalties are not working so now we're going to make it a criminal offense and you know from my understanding and actually from what they said i'm one of the first to actually be convicted under the new criminal case right like there might be a couple but you're talking like a couple literally you know if there is two to three maybe you know so this is the first time that we're starting to hear about people getting more than fines and i don't think it's gonna stop here you know i think that you're gonna see more and more of this of people you know and and i think that we're going to at some point see people behind bars for this yeah it's definitely progressed and and that's why with our last episode i really took it to heart what you were saying and really thought about it and then connecting today just to hear you know how did this you know finally come to an end and what um just you know the takeaway from it i think is really important and that's why it's it's great to have you on the podcast to talk about this you know into and to state it i know there's there were a ton of people that were like oh well you know let us know have them come back on and update everything and everything so it was uh you know it was really cool to you know be able to chat with you again and i think the message and what you're talking about is very important we all need to think about that and um you know just understand this stuff has real consequences it's not like you said it's not just the fine anymore it's an actual penalty right right no and and it is and and i mean you know it sucks i mean you know i didn't think growing up that i would ever see a time where you know people in the automotive industry who are passionate about something are going to end up with jail time for just something they're passionate about right like i mean that's the argument that's being made is like freedoms are being taken away right but it's it's the whole here's here's the thing people can be as pissed as they want but if we're not changing it what are we doing you know and it's not just the us right like people want to get so riled up you know how many other countries have already done this and it's similar right like my wife's from norway for example so out of curiosity's sake we went on on a road trip and and she starts looking up the the laws over there right and it's very similar like with the fines and and how severe it is and you're talking about a country that for murder gets eight years like that's their max for murder or or it was for a long time and they're talking about increasing it from two to three years of jail time for violating basically emissions laws right so you're getting darn near half the time for an emissions violation that you are a murder in this country like it you know over there and it's like this is the severity of it and this is how serious they're taking it you know and this is like this isn't just the us i mean it is a worldwide attack on you know emissions climate change whatever you want to throw it into that category but the automotive enthusiasts are the ones that are catching the brunt of this you know i i mean let's be honest right i mean we can we can argue about the the in-between stuff right but this is so new that even like in my case the u.s attorney's office didn't have cases to reference to say to the judge hey in this case or that case this is what happened they were referencing cases of epa cases where people had spilt drums of chemicals right trying to relate that to what we're doing so it's it's so new that we're still on that forefront of like this is going to snowball very quickly right like they're setting the precedent right now hey the first couple guys are going to get x right and and they're going to keep increasing this you know on one hand it kind of sucks that i was one of the first because well they're going to try and make an example on the other hand i was kind of lucky in a sense of like as these cases go on and they say okay well so-and-so got busted for x y and z well this guy did 10 times the amount and he got six months okay so now okay well you're going to spend 18 months behind bars because you did 10 times the amount the guy that got six months house arrest right like that's the progression that we're gonna see here that's very true that's a that's a good point it's um it's it was great to chat with you which was under different circumstances that we had recorded podcasts but um you know i think the the insights and the things you're talking about it everyone you can we can just identify with it whether we're a truck enthusiast a shop owner a company that's out there just you know i had people listen to this episode that they're not even into diesels they're not even into automotive they just found the topic really interesting and so i uh you know i appreciate you coming back on appreciate you reaching out michael and um you know telling us what you did spreading the message um you know that you are and and we uh you know wish you the best hope that uh you know things go well and anything we can ever do to help you or chat about or anything like that and you're always more than welcome back on the podcast absolutely awesome appreciate the time budget don't forget diesel fans make sure and head on over to kershaw.kia usa.com use code diesel20 for 20 off site wide they got a ton of cool things there whether you need something for the outdoors everyday carry at home and really products to be any budget so there's something there for everybody make sure and take advantage of it i also want to encourage you guys if you're listening on youtube make sure to subscribe to the podcast turn on notifications like and comment it helps these episodes reach new diesel truck owners or people who are looking to have problems solved they can't find the answer this will pop up for them so we really appreciate that and then also all of our patreons that have helped us grow throughout the years support us i want to give a shout out to tyler lona 23 diesel caleb all of our patreons all of you who subscribe on youtube instagram facebook all the podcast apps you guys keep us going and keep the creativity going with uh ways to bring you guys different stories 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Channel: The Diesel Podcast

Views: 25,441

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Id: Og-TKY-q92U

Length: 29min 17sec (1757 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2022