A U.S. district court accepted the guilty plea by Hino Motors, a Toyota subsidiary, for a multiyear emissions fraud scheme.
The government said that Hino used the fraudulent data to secure approvals for and sell more than 105,000 diesel engines from 2010 to 2022.
District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith sentenced Hino to:
- Pay a criminal fine of $521.76 million,
- Serve a five-year probation prohibiting Hino from importing its diesel engines,
- Forfeit $1.087 billion (which includes payments for an emissions mitigation program, recall program, and an assortment of civil settlements), and
- Implement compliance, ethics, and reporting programs.
Hino and the Justice Department announced the emissions fraud resolution in January. Hino agreed to plead guilty and pay more than $1.6 billion to resolve alleged emissions fraud with its heavy-duty diesel engine.
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“Hino unlawfully imported over 105,000 engines that did not comply with U.S. emissions standards and lied about what it was doing,” Adam Gustafson, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said. “Hino’s criminal conduct gave it an unfair business advantage over other law-abiding companies, including American companies, and generated over $1 billion in gross proceeds.”
The Environmental Protection Agency discovered the fraud during confirmatory testing of Hino’s engines. The agency estimated that Hino’s engine emitted more NOx, particulate matter, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide than regulations allowed. On January 10, the agency voided engine approvals for Hino’s 2010-2019 diesel engines, the largest voiding action ever taken by the EPA. This resolution also includes the second-largest criminal fine and fourth-largest civil penalty in the history of the EPA’s mobile source program.
