A California auto parts company sold 355 illegal devices engineered to delete your car’s pollution controls, pumped dirty exhaust into American neighborhoods for over a year, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency let them settle the entire case for $10,000 (about enough to cover two months of average rent in the state where they operate).

What They Actually Sold: Tools Built to Break the Law

JH Motorsports, Inc. is headquartered at 14150 S. Harlan Road in Lathrop, California. The company describes itself as a distributor of motor vehicle parts, primarily targeting Volkswagen and Audi enthusiasts. Between August 28, 2022 and August 28, 2023, the EPA alleges the company sold and installed three categories of illegal hardware to customers across the United States.

The first category: straight pipes. These are designed specifically to delete the catalytic converter. The catalytic converter is the device that converts toxic engine exhaust — hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides — into less harmful gases before they exit the tailpipe. Removing it means those pollutants go directly into the air with no treatment at all.

The second category: secondary air injection (SAI) system block-off plates. The SAI system pumps fresh air into the exhaust stream during engine warm-up to help the catalytic converter reach operating temperature faster and cut cold-start emissions. Blocking this system both increases cold-start pollution and, according to the EPA documents, “facilitates the removal of the catalytic converter.” It is preparation for making the car permanently dirtier.

The Paper Trail That Condemned Them

The third category: intake manifold flap deletes. These replace the factory component that controls airflow into the engine. The EPA documents note that JH Motorsports sold these with a disclaimer calling them “illegal for use on emissions-controlled vehicles or any vehicle registered for public street or highway use.” The company knew. It said so in writing. It sold them anyway.

All three product types target the same outcome: more power extracted from the engine, at the direct expense of the pollution controls that protect the air everyone breathes. The EPA conducted a site inspection on August 28, 2023, requested records, and received JH Motorsports’ own responses on September 7, 2023. The company’s own paperwork confirmed the scale of what they had done.

The Math They Don’t Want You to Do

Federal law is explicit. Violations of Section 203(a)(3)(B) of the Clean Air Act carry a maximum civil penalty of $5,911 per violation for violations occurring after November 2, 2015, when penalties are assessed on or after January 8, 2025. JH Motorsports sold and installed 355 devices. At $5,911 each, the maximum statutory penalty is $2,098,405.

$2,098,405 (enough to fully fund roughly 420 families’ grocery bills for an entire year at national averages). That is what the law authorized the EPA to extract from JH Motorsports for selling 355 pieces of hardware engineered to cheat pollution rules and poison the air.

The EPA settled for $10,000 (roughly the cost of a decent used car, or about two months of median rent in California). That is 0.47% of the maximum penalty. The company claimed it could not pay more. The EPA took that claim at face value, signed a consent agreement, and closed the case on June 5, 2025.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What the Settlement Doesn’t Account For

The $10,000 figure (roughly two months’ rent for a one-bedroom in California’s Central Valley, where JH Motorsports operates) settles a federal legal proceeding. It settles nothing else. No sum in this consent agreement compensates the people who live near roads where 355 modified vehicles now drive without functioning catalytic converters. No line item covers the child in a downwind community whose asthma attacks become more frequent because tailpipe emissions went uncontrolled. No accounting exists for that in this document.

Catalytic converters exist for a reason. They convert hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides — the raw byproducts of gasoline combustion — into carbon dioxide, water, and nitrogen before those compounds enter the air. The straight pipes JH Motorsports sold, totaling 149 units across multiple Audi and Volkswagen models, eliminate that conversion entirely. Every vehicle running one of those pipes is a rolling pollution source that has been deliberately uncertified, spreading toxic exhaust across every road it travels, in every city its owner lives in or passes through.

The Dignity of Knowing the Rules Apply to You

There is a particular kind of insult built into defeat devices sold for premium performance cars. JH Motorsports’ product line targets Audi S4s, S5s, RS5s, Q7s, and A6s — vehicles purchased by people with significant disposable income. The message embedded in this business model is stark: if you can afford a luxury car and the cost of aftermarket performance parts, the emissions rules that apply to everyone else can be bypassed for a price. The exhaust that every emissions standard is designed to contain gets redistributed to the public, free of charge, with no consent asked.

The communities bearing that cost are rarely the same communities purchasing performance upgrades for Audi RS5s. The SAI block-off plates alone — 99 units sold — specifically increase cold-start pollution, the emissions spike that happens every single morning when an engine first starts. In neighborhoods with high traffic density, cold-start emissions from multiple vehicles add up fast. The people breathing that air have no idea a company in Lathrop, California sold a piece of hardware that made the air around their home measurably more toxic. They have no settlement. They have no compensation. They have no notification.

Legal Receipts: Straight from the Document

The following passages are quoted directly from the EPA Region IX Consent Agreement and Final Order filed June 5, 2025.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: Every Road Is Downstream

Nitrogen oxides (NOx) and hydrocarbons are the primary pollutants that catalytic converters are designed to neutralize. When JH Motorsports sold 149 straight pipes designed to delete catalytic converters entirely, those pollutants started flowing unfiltered from those vehicles’ tailpipes into the air on American roads. NOx reacts with sunlight to form ground-level ozone — the primary component of smog — which triggers asthma attacks, reduces lung function, and causes cardiovascular damage with long-term exposure.

The 99 SAI system block-off plates JH Motorsports sold compound this problem specifically during cold starts, the period when a car’s emissions controls are least effective and the engine runs richest. Blocking the secondary air injection system during this window removes a key mechanism that helps the catalytic converter reach operating temperature quickly, deliberately extending the window of peak pollution output every single time one of these vehicles starts up. The EPA document is explicit: this system “facilitates the removal of the catalytic converter.”

The customers buying these parts received the performance benefit. Their neighbors, their children’s classmates, the people at bus stops on their commute routes — those individuals received the exhaust, and no portion of the $10,000 settlement reaches them.

Economic Inequality: The Pollution Gap in Plain Sight

JH Motorsports’ product catalog targets a specific consumer: someone who owns a late-model Audi S4, S5, RS5, Q7, A6, A7, S6, S7, or RS7 — vehicles whose base prices run from $50,000 to well over $100,000. The 91 manifold flap delete units and 149 straight pipe units sold represent a transaction in which affluent car enthusiasts paid to extract more performance from already-expensive vehicles by offloading the environmental cost of that performance onto the general public.

Emissions regulations exist precisely to prevent this dynamic: to stop private actors from converting a shared public resource — breathable air — into a private performance advantage. The defeat device market is, structurally, a mechanism for wealthy consumers to externalize pollution costs onto communities that have no say in the transaction. The fact that the company selling these products faced a maximum penalty of $2,098,405 (enough to fund a small-town public health department for several years) and paid $10,000 (less than the cost of the parts themselves in many cases) reinforces exactly the message that the law was meant to prevent: that environmental accountability is optional if you can demonstrate financial hardship after the fact.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now? Here’s What You Can Do With This

The People Who Signed This Deal

The consent agreement identifies the following individuals and entities directly:

• Jason Harbinson, Chief Executive Officer, JH Motorsports, Inc. — the company representative who signed the consent agreement and submitted the financial hardship claim. Email on record: Jason@jhmotorsports.com
• Kaoru Morimoto, Assistant Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region IX — the EPA official who approved and signed the settlement on the government’s side.
• Frank Radoslovich, Partner, Radoslovich, Shapiro PC — JH Motorsports’ attorney of record.

The Watchlist: Who Should Be Watching This

• EPA Region IX Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division — the office that negotiated and accepted this settlement. Public comments and FOIA requests can be directed here.
• California Air Resources Board (CARB) — California has its own, stricter emissions enforcement authority. CARB has independent jurisdiction to pursue violations of California law separate from this federal consent agreement.
• EPA Office of Inspector General — the internal watchdog for EPA enforcement decisions, including whether penalty reductions based on claimed financial hardship are adequately scrutinized.
• Congress: House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — the oversight bodies with jurisdiction over EPA enforcement adequacy.

The Ground-Level Response

If you live in a community near high-traffic roads and want to do something with this story beyond reading it: connect with your local air quality management district, find out if there is a community air monitoring network near you, and ask your city council whether local emissions enforcement resources are being prioritized. Cases like this one are not anomalies — they are the baseline outcome when enforcement budgets are thin, penalties are easily negotiated down, and corporate interests can claim poverty without independent verification. Local organizing around air quality produces measurable results. Mutual aid networks in environmental justice communities have successfully pushed for air monitoring in underserved neighborhoods. That is where the leverage is, because the federal consent agreement process, as this document demonstrates, clearly is not providing it.