Trump admin hands legal victory to alleged B.C. defeat device smugglers

In late 2024, two B.C. men were staring at up to 20 years in prison for allegedly attempting to subvert U.S. clean air laws by smuggling millions of dollars worth of illegal car parts across the border.

But in late January, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration made a U-turn on environmental law enforcement.

On social media, the Department of Justice announced it was ending criminal prosecutions of people accused of engine tampering with parts commonly known as defeat devices.

Defeat devices are a range of hardware and software gadgets to bypass or disable legally required emission control systems on diesel cars and trucks.

Among those whose criminal cases that have been dismissed are Philip John Sweeney of Coquitlam and Kevin Paul Dodd — last known to be in Maple Ridge but the U.S. Marshals Service told CBC News last week he is a fugitive because of the case.

"It's hard to hear," former U.S. Attorney Vanessa Waldref, who announced the charges against those men in 2024, said in an interview last week about the blanket dismissals. 

"Seasoned investigators have really dedicated years to ensuring that these cases were properly investigated, properly charged, and were working through the system in a way that really was to serve the public and to serve public health."

But it likely won't be hard to hear for Dodd, Sweeney and their co-accused, who no longer face the threat of years in prison for what prosecutors described as a years-long scheme violating the U.S. Clean Air Act and earning tens of millions of dollars along the way.

The allegations were never proven in court. CBC was unable to get on-the-record comment from the accused or their lawyers.

Prosecutors claimed in an indictment that Dodd, Sweeney and American father-and-son John Wesley Owens and Joshua Wesley Owens smuggled $33 million US worth of illegal defeat devices from Canada into the U.S. in an evolving operation involving several companies, fully-loaded box trucks of goods, a Cayman Islands website and then-novel AI technology.

The World Health Organization declared diesel engine exhaust as cancer-causing in 2012 and called for actions to reduce the general population's exposure to it.

But evolving regulations spurred a growth industry of defeat devices, which experts like Kwantlen University automotive instructor Kameron Easton said can also provide greater engine power and cheaper maintenance.

"I understand the allure from a customer's perspective … but there really is the invisible thing that you're not seeing of polluting the environment, of affecting people's breathing," Easton, also a certified diesel truck inspector, said Easton. 

"It can cause a lot of health problems, so I don't see the trade off as being worth it." said Easton.