Enlarge / Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images (credit: Getty images)

The US Justice Department announced criminal charges against former Audi manager Giovanni Pamio late last week. The 60-year-old manager was on a team concerned with thermodynamics in Audi’s diesel engine department between 2006 and 2015—the years when Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche were producing diesel vehicles that included “defeat device” software. The illegal software killed the cars’ emissions control system when the the cars sensed that they were being driven in real-world conditions and not in a lab where emissions were to be detected and reported to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

According to the Justice Department, Pamio and his team realized that it would be impossible to meet nitrogen oxide (NO_x) emissions standards without the addition of a large tank for urea formula, called AdBlue, which would have neutralized some of the emissions. The addition of the large AdBlue tank would “interfere with features considered to be attractive to customers, such as a high-end sound system,” the Department of Justice said.

Pamio then allegedly “directed Audi employees to design and implement software functions to cheat the standard US emissions tests,” and gave false information to US regulators about how those software functions worked.