For more than a decade, Hino Motors Corporation imported and sold more than 105,000 vehicles and engines with misleading or fabricated emissions data until an inspection by the Environmental Protection Agency uncovered an emissions fraud scheme.
The lawsuit requires the Toyota subsidiary to plead guilty and agree to pay more than $1.6 billion in fines over five years and forfeit $1 billion in profits from illegal sales.
The EPA touted the case Monday in its Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Results for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2025, and claimed in a press release that the agency closed more cases in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term than in any year under the Biden administration.
But 75% of the 61 EPA criminal cases tried in federal court during that period began before Trump’s second term, according to EPA records and legal documents. The EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice announced the fines against Hino Motors on January 15, 2025, five days before President Trump was inaugurated.
The EPA did not respond to Inside Climate News’ questions about enforcement or compliance status.
In the Trump administration’s results announcement, the EPA said it closed 2,127 civil enforcement cases last fiscal year, assessed more than $1.2 billion in civil penalties and criminal costs, and secured more than $6.4 billion to bring facilities back into compliance. The veracity of the numbers on the EPA website depends on when the investigation began and the nature of the compliance actions, details of which are unclear.
“This is propaganda,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the Civil Service for Environmental Responsibility and former senior enforcement attorney at the EPA. “It doesn’t reflect reality in many ways.”
One example: According to the White House, the EPA has suspended enforcement of the Clean Air Act and negotiated only one settlement since the start of the Trump administration, compared to 26 in the first year of Trump’s first term and 22 in the first year of Biden’s administration. Enforcement of the Clean Air Act often involves the fossil fuel and automobile industries, which account for most of the air pollution. Superfund cleanup settlements also hit a new low, according to the White House.
The data comes after multiple watchdog reports documented a significant drop in enforcement under the EPA under the Trump administration, finding that the Justice Department filed just 16 lawsuits in President Trump’s first year in office, a 76% decrease compared to President Joe Biden’s first year.
The EPA also touted other high-profile criminal enforcement cases, including the indictment of J.H. Baxter & Company and its president for intentionally releasing hazardous air pollutants into the atmosphere. The EPA announced the $1.5 million fine in April 2025, but the Oregon-based company was indicted in November 2024 under the Biden administration.
A federal judge sentenced Delia Favreau-Miske to seven years in prison in April 2025 in the case against Miske Enterprises. However, in January 2024, Favreau-Miske pleaded guilty to unrelated environmental charges, including falsifying pesticide and fumigation records, as well as bank fraud, obstruction of justice, and wire fraud.
Under the second Trump administration, the EPA imposed nearly $17 million in criminal fines and restitution. The majority of the fine, $15.7 million, was paid by Murex Management, an ethanol sales and distribution company, in a plea agreement related to bank fraud.
Several defendants in other cases have not yet gone to trial or are awaiting sentencing, including 13 Chinese nationals accused of stealing restaurant cooking oil, reselling it, transporting it across state lines and laundering the proceeds, according to court records.
Experts warn that enforcement levels are unlikely to be maintained given the administration’s cuts to the EPA and rollbacks of various regulations meant to protect the climate and environment.
The EPA lost more than 4,000 employees in the first year of Trump’s second term, dropping staffing to its lowest level in 40 years, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data. This represented a 24 percent reduction, more than double the percentage of jobs lost among the entire federal workforce at the time. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s environmental division has lost a third of its lawyers in the past year, according to an analysis by E&E News.
“EPA’s immediate outlook for a meaningful enforcement program is very bleak, but that’s by design,” Whitehouse said. “That’s what the administration wants. They want to dismantle the EPA enforcement program. They’re (sharing) these numbers to give the American people a false sense of security.”
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Wyatt Miskow
phoenix reporter
Wyatt Miskow is based in Phoenix and covers drought, biodiversity, and the transition to renewable energy across the western United States and previously reported for the Arizona Republic and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Wyatt has lived in the Southwest since birth and graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
Lisa Sorg
north carolina reporter
Lisa Sorg is a North Carolina reporter for Inside Climate News. A journalist for 30 years, Sorg covers energy, climate and agriculture, as well as the social justice impacts of pollution and corporate misconduct.
She has received numerous awards for news, public service, and investigative reporting. In 2022, she won the Stokes Award from the National Press Foundation for a two-part story about the environmental damage caused by a former missile factory in a black and Latino neighborhood in Burlington. Mr. Sorg previously served as an environmental investigative reporter at NC Newsline, a Raleigh-based nonprofit media outlet. She has also worked for alternative weeklies, dailies, and magazines. Originally from rural Indiana, I now live in Durham, North Carolina.
