TL;DR:
Federal environmental regulators say Kentucky-based Thoroughbred Performance Products, Inc., doing business as Thoroughbred Diesel, sold and offered more than 15,000 “defeat devices” that shut off pollution controls on diesel trucks across the United States. These parts were designed to remove or disable systems that keep toxic exhaust out of the air.
The evil company agreed to pay $1.25 million, stop selling the hardware, and scrub its websites and social media of material promoting tampering. The case shows how a profit-driven aftermarket industry can undercut basic public health protections and how enforcement under neoliberal capitalism often arrives only after the damage is done.
Keep reading for the details, the timeline, and what this case reveals about corporate accountability, regulatory power, and the incentives that shape corporate ethics.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Selling Pollution in a Box
- Inside the Allegations: Corporate Misconduct and Timeline
- How the Defeat Device Business Worked
- Regulatory Loopholes and Neoliberal Deregulation
- Profit-Maximization at All Costs
- Environmental and Public Health Risks
- The PR Machine and Online Promotion
- Legal Minimalism and “Ability to Pay” Penalties
- How Capitalism Uses Delay
- Corporate Accountability and the Limits of the Law
- This Is the System Working as Intended
- Conclusion: Serious Case, Serious Harm
1. Introduction: Selling Pollution in a Box
Thoroughbred Performance Products, Inc., a Kentucky corporation that sells diesel truck parts, built a significant line of business around hardware that federal regulators classify as “aftermarket defeat devices.” These are parts whose main effect is to shut off or remove pollution controls that vehicle makers are required to install under the Clean Air Act.
According to the enforcement record, the company sold and offered 15,247 of these devices in just over a year, marketing them to distributors and customers across the country.
The parts were aimed at popular heavy-duty pickups and commercial vehicles from Ford, General Motors, Dodge, Ram, and others.
The law treats this as a direct attack on public health protections. Congress required automakers to build in equipment that controls harmful exhaust because vehicle pollution “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” When a company sells hardware whose purpose is to defeat those systems, it turns clean-air safeguards into optional add-ons.
This case is a snapshot of how a deregulated market, built around performance and “freedom” branding, can monetize the removal of public protections and shift the costs onto the air that everyone breathes.
2. The Corporate Misconduct and Timeline
Scale of the alleged violations
Regulators allege that between September 1, 2018 and October 10, 2019, Thoroughbred Performance Products:
- Sold 4,858 units of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) delete hardware.
- Sold 10,079 units of exhaust emission control delete hardware.
- Sold 310 tuner-related products designed to work with those deletes.
- For a total of 15,247 defeat devices sold or offered for sale, each treated as a separate violation of the Clean Air Act section that bans such parts!
These products were designed for specific diesel truck platforms and engines, including Cummins, Power Stroke, and Duramax models.
Allegations timeline
The enforcement record lays out a clear, multi-year sequence in which sales came first and consequences arrived later.
Timeline of the Thoroughbred Diesel defeat device case
| Date | Event | What it shows about the system |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 1, 2018 | Start of period in which regulators later allege defeat-device sales and offers. | Defeat devices are already in the market and in use. |
| Oct 10, 2019 | EPA sends an information request to the company about its manufacture, sale, and installation of defeat devices. | Enforcement begins only after a year of sales. |
| Nov 13 & Dec 4, 2019; Jan 13, 2020 | Company sends documents responding to the request. | Regulators rely on company records to trace the scale of misconduct. |
| July 21, 2021 | EPA issues a formal Notice of Potential Violation and Opportunity to Confer. | The allegation becomes an official case. |
| Aug 25, 2021 – Jan 24, 2024 | Multiple meetings between EPA and the company to discuss violations and settlement terms. | Negotiation stretches across more than two years. |
| April 4, 2024 (signature date on agreement page) | Company’s CEO signs the consent agreement. | The company commits to a penalty and future conduct changes. |
From the beginning of the alleged misconduct to the signing of the agreement, almost five and a half years passed. During that time, the defeat-device market kept moving and thousands of trucks kept driving.
3. How the Defeat Device Business Worked
Federal regulators describe Thoroughbred Performance Products as a “person” under the Clean Air Act, operating a facility in Winchester, Kentucky and selling motor vehicle parts nationwide. At all relevant times, the company sold and offered parts that involve “the removal of emissions-related devices or elements of design.”
Those parts fall into three main categories:
Key defeat device categories
| Category | What the parts targeted | Alleged number of sales/offers (Sept 2018–Oct 2019) |
|---|---|---|
| EGR delete hardware | Exhaust gas recirculation systems that cut certain pollutants. | 4,858 |
| Exhaust emission control delete hardware | Equipment such as catalytic converters, diesel particulate filters, diesel oxidation catalysts, and related components. | 10,079 |
| Tuner-related products | Electronic devices used to re-program engine controls to work with deleted hardware. | 310 |
| Total | — | 15,247 |
The parts were marketed for a wide range of vehicles: Dodge and Ram 2500/3500 pickups, Ford F-250 and F-350 trucks, GM 2500/3500 models, cab-and-chassis work trucks, and even diesel passenger vehicles like the Chevy Cruze and Colorado and Nissan Titan XD. The appendix lists dozens of part numbers, each tied to particular engines and model years.
Regulators state that these parts were “intended to bypass, defeat, or render inoperative” core emissions systems, including:
- Exhaust gas recirculation systems
- Catalytic converters
- Diesel particulate filters
- Diesel oxidation catalysts
- Selective catalytic reduction systems
- On-board diagnostic systems
The enforcement document concludes that the company knew or should have known that the parts were being sold for that use.
4. Regulatory Loopholes and Neoliberal Deregulation
The Clean Air Act gives the federal government authority to set standards for pollution from new vehicles and engines and to certify that vehicles meet those standards before sale. The law also bans any parts whose main effect is to defeat those pollution controls.
Yet an entire aftermarket industry has grown around “delete kits” and tuners, sold through online retailers, small shops, and brand-name performance companies. Cases like this one show how that industry has operated for years in the space between ambitious legal standards and limited day-to-day oversight.
Under a neoliberal regulatory model, agencies enforce after the fact. Companies expand into profitable gray zones until regulators push back. In this case, enforcement arrived only after thousands of devices had already moved into the market and onto vehicles.
The document also shows how enforcement depends on negotiated settlements. The company neither admits nor denies the factual allegations in the findings section yet agrees to pay a penalty and accept conditions.
This pattern reflects a system where regulators seek compliance through bargaining instead of forcing courtroom trials that might set stronger precedents or expose more internal records.
5. Profit-Maximization at All Costs
The raw numbers describe a business strategy that favors revenue over corporate social responsibility. In just over thirteen months, the evil company sold more than 15,000 defeat devices across three product categories aimed at high-demand diesel trucks!
The evil company chose to sell:
- Hardware that physically removes emissions equipment.
- Electronic tuning devices that re-program engines to run without that equipment.
- Product lines that covered nearly every major diesel truck platform of the last two decades.
This is not a one-off mistake in a catalog.
The appendix lists a dense grid of part numbers from multiple manufacturers, each tied to specific vehicles and years. That structure looks like a deliberate inventory strategy: build a comprehensive suite of hardware to help customers strip pollution controls off many of the most popular diesel platforms.
The company’s decision to stop selling defeat devices only appears in the record after the enforcement process is underway. It confirms to regulators that it “no longer sells or offers for sale aftermarket defeat devices.”
The timing sends a clear message about incentives. As long as the profit from defeat-device sales exceeds the perceived risk of enforcement, the market thrives.
6. Environmental and Public Health Risks
The law at the center of this case exists because vehicle pollution poses a direct threat to public health and welfare. The Clean Air Act instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to set standards for “any air pollutant” from vehicles that may endanger health or welfare and requires automakers to design and install emissions-control systems to meet those limits.
When drivers remove diesel particulate filters, catalytic converters, and selective catalytic reduction systems, engines release far more soot and smog-forming gases than certified levels. Public-health and environmental science link those pollutants to asthma attacks, heart disease, early deaths, and ecosystem damage. These relationships are documented widely across scientific and regulatory literature and form the rationale for the Clean Air Act’s vehicle provisions.
By selling packages that disable these controls, the company treated clean air protections as optional accessories rather than basic safety equipment. Every deleted truck keeps its horsepower and torque. The extra cost shows up in the air that communities breathe, in the health systems that handle pollution-linked illness, and in the environment that absorbs the fallout.
7. The PR Machine and Online Promotion
The enforcement order places special conditions on the company’s marketing. Within 14 days of signing, the company must remove from its web pages and all of its social media accounts “all advertisements, photos, videos, and information” that relate to tampering or to selling or installing defeat devices. Only material explaining how to comply with the Clean Air Act can remain.
This requirement tells its own story. The company did not simply stock defeat devices in a back room. It promoted them through online storefronts and social feeds. That digital marketing amplified demand, turned illegal equipment into branded lifestyle products, and helped normalize tampering as a form of personal expression and performance culture.
In a market shaped by neoliberal capitalism, corporate pollution often travels through glossy web design and influencer-style content. Cases like this show how important online promotion has become in spreading hardware that undermines public protections.
8. Legal Minimalism and “Ability to Pay” Penalties
The settlement imposes a $1,250,000 civil penalty. Regulators describe this as a “compromised civil penalty” based on the company’s “substantiated ability to pay” claim.
From the public record:
- Regulators allege 15,247 separate violations.
- The company agrees to pay $1.25 million.
That works out to roughly $82 per alleged violation. In other words, each defeat device that regulators say broke the law carries a settlement cost comparable to a traffic ticket.
This is legal minimalism in action. Penalties are calibrated to the company’s claimed finances, not to the full social cost of extra pollution or the number of communities affected. The company also avoids any admission that the factual allegations are true, even as it accepts the financial hit and new obligations.
Under late-stage capitalism, this kind of arrangement is common. Companies treat regulatory penalties as a manageable business expense. Compliance becomes something to negotiate rather than a baseline responsibility to the public.
9. How Capitalism Uses Delay
The timeline reveals years between the start of allegedly illegal sales and final penalty payment. Enforcement begins in 2019, with the information request, yet the consent agreement becomes effective only after a judicial officer signs it in 2024.
During that period:
- Vehicles with deleted pollution controls continue to operate.
- The company’s previous sales remain in circulation.
- The broader defeat-device market keeps evolving.
Complex legal processes, limited staff, and negotiation culture all slow the path from harm to accountability. In a profit-driven system, delay works like quiet subsidy. The company collects revenue up front. Communities bear the pollution in real time. The costs only partially land years later, through a settlement structured around the violator’s financial resilience.
10. Corporate Accountability and the Limits of the Law
The consent agreement does several concrete things:
- Orders a $1.25 million penalty with interest and non-payment penalties if the company misses deadlines.
- Requires the company to stop manufacturing, selling, offering for sale, or installing any part that defeats emissions controls.
- Forces the company to clean its online presence of tampering material.
- States that the agreement counts as an enforcement action in the company’s compliance history.
It also clearly defines the boundaries of accountability:
- The company “neither admits nor denies” the factual allegations in the findings.
- The settlement resolves only the civil penalty claims described in the agreement.
- The company acknowledges EPA’s authority, waives the right to contest the allegations in this proceeding, and waives the right to appeal the final order.
- Executives face no personal penalties. There is no requirement to retrofit vehicles already modified with these devices. The law reaches the corporate entity, takes a negotiated sum, and sets forward-looking rules, while the pollution from past tampering continues.
This is corporate accountability under a narrow legal frame: the goal is to end the specific practices and secure some financial consequence, not to fully repair the harm or fundamentally reshape incentives in the industry.
11. This Is the System Working as Intended
From a deregulatory neoliberal perspective, this outcome represents the system functioning as designed.
- The government sets rules for corporate ethics and pollution.
- A company pushes past those boundaries to capture profit in a specialized market niche.
- When regulators catch up, the sides negotiate a settlement that the company can afford.
- The company continues in business under new terms, while communities live with the accumulated pollution.
The consent agreement that I pulled to write this article came from this following link from the EPA’s website: https://yosemite.epa.gov/OA/RHC/EPAAdmin.nsf/Filings/E7C567DF389B3A3C85258B030079167C/$File/THOROU~4.PDF
💡 Explore Corporate Misconduct by Category
Corporations harm people every day — from wage theft to pollution. Learn more by exploring key areas of injustice.
- 💀 Product Safety Violations — When companies risk lives for profit.
- 🌿 Environmental Violations — Pollution, ecological collapse, and unchecked greed.
- 💼 Labor Exploitation — Wage theft, worker abuse, and unsafe conditions.
- 🛡️ Data Breaches & Privacy Abuses — Misuse and mishandling of personal information.
- 💵 Financial Fraud & Corruption — Lies, scams, and executive impunity.
NOTE:
This website is facing massive amounts of headwind trying to procure the lawsuits relating to corporate misconduct. We are being pimp-slapped by a quadruple whammy:
- The Trump regime's reversal of the laws & regulations meant to protect us is making it so victims are no longer filing lawsuits for shit which was previously illegal.
- Donald Trump's defunding of regulatory agencies led to the frequency of enforcement actions severely decreasing. What's more, the quality of the enforcement actions has also plummeted.
- The GOP's insistence on cutting the healthcare funding for millions of Americans in order to give their billionaire donors additional tax cuts has recently shut the government down. This government shut down has also impacted the aforementioned defunded agencies capabilities to crack down on evil-doers. Donald Trump has since threatened to make these agency shutdowns permanent on account of them being "democrat agencies".
- My access to the LexisNexis legal research platform got revoked. This isn't related to Trump or anything, but it still hurt as I'm being forced to scrounge around public sources to find legal documents now. Sadge.
All four of these factors are severely limiting my ability to access stories of corporate misconduct.
Due to this, I have temporarily decreased the amount of articles published everyday from 5 down to 3, and I will also be publishing articles from previous years as I was fortunate enough to download a butt load of EPA documents back in 2022 and 2023 to make YouTube videos with.... This also means that you'll be seeing many more environmental violation stories going forward :3
Thank you for your attention to this matter,
Aleeia (owner and publisher of www.evilcorporations.com)
Also, can we talk about how ICE has a $170 billion annual budget, while the EPA-- which protects the air we breathe and water we drink-- barely clocks $4 billion? Just something to think about....
