United States v. GDP Tuning, et al.

On July 30, 2024, a court sentenced Barry Pierce and his two companies, GDP Tuning and Custom Auto of Rexburg, d/b/a Gorilla Performance for tampering with e missions control systems and selling tampering software. Pierce will serve four months’  incarceration. GDP Tuning and Gorilla Performance will complete five-year terms of probation. All defendants were ordered to jointly pay a $1 million fine.

Between 2016 and 2020, the defendants tampered with a required monitoring device by removing emissions control devices (often referred to as “ deleting” ) from more than 200 diesel trucks and reprogrammed (“ tuned” ) the onboard diagnostic systems to enable them to function without the emissions equipment. Pierce told Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inspectors in 2018 that his companies sold kits to delete trucks and products to tune them, including tunes and tuners. In response to EPA’ s later follow-up, GDP Tuning produced sales data indicating that it sold more than 20,000 tuning products for approximately $14 million in revenue acquired between January 2018 and August 2019.

The defendants pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Air Act (18 U.S.C. § 371; 42 U.S.C. § 7413).

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Criminal Investigation Division conducted the investigation.