Diesel Bros Fight Back! Heavy D Chooses Jail Over Paying $850k in Fines

Truck influencer Dave Sparks aka Heavy D arrested Tuesday morning over refusal to pay $850K in fines for selling “deleted” diesel truck.

Sparks was arrested Tuesday, October 7 in Utah after a judge found him in contempt of court over his failure to pay $850k in fines related to a judgment that determined he and co-defendants were liable for selling illegally modified diesel trucks. The modifications to the trucks emissions systems are claimed to improve performance and simplify repairs, a claim that is at least partially undercut by Sparks’ own words in a recent Instagram video, where he states the DPF doesn’t interfere with getting racecar-level performance from a Ram HD. (Also of note is that Sparks recently appeared in a commercial with Ram’s CEO Tim Kuniskis about bringing back the Hemi V8 with a “symbol of protest” added to it.)

Community Support

Fellow influencer Kory Willis took to Facebook with claims that Sparks was acting in protest of government overreach and bad technology mandates. “The truth of this nasty green scam matter will come out,” he wrote. “I support Dave 100% for also STANDING UP against the green new scam.” He goes on to call out a “common enemy” of “liberals” before suggesting political weaponization as the underlying issue here.

Willis has some experience in the matter. In 2021 he and his company Power Performance Enterprises, Inc. paid a $3.1 million fine a few years ago for similar diesel “deletion” work.

Setting aside the likelihood that a Utah-based Federal judge is the tip of the spear of a vast, shadowy liberal conspiracy, it’s worth pointing out that despite several executive orders from the Trump administration aimed at rolling back EPA provisions perceived as unnecessary or harmful, the equipment in question was not addressed, and remains illegal under federal law.

Another truck influencer (and one of Sparks’ co-defendants in the case), Keaton “The Muscle” Hoskins, posted a lengthy screed to Facebook claiming the entire case was simply a money grab by the defendants’ lawyers. “When our TV show came out [the plaintiffs] saw nothing more than a money grab,” he wrote. “So they came after us.”

The post goes on to defend their actions by claiming millions of others had done the same thing and that the technology is pointless if not harmful. “This EPA equipment is and will always be garbage,” he claims in the post. “[It] is BS and has no real value at protecting the environment.”

Hoskins goes on to admit that he himself “bought out” of the lawsuit while expressing admiration for Sparks ongoing refusal to do the same. “I bought myself out of the lawsuit because I know how unfair it is to fight the government and its bureaucracy,” he added in a comment. “But [Sparks] never once let in on this, he never said it was right, never agreed to any of it, went through years of battling this.”

Sparks Isn’t Alone: Similar Cases

Sparks isn’t the only high-profile truck enthusiast to have the legal hammer come down on him for tampering with the federally mandated emissions equipment. In August, we covered the story of Tony Lake, a Wyoming-based diesel mechanic and entrepreneur who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act on June 12, 2024. He’s currently on supervised release from a one year and one day sentence in federal prison (he also paid a little over $50k in fines).

Lake’s family has been pleading with the Trump administration for his pardon for some time. That effort recently gained a high-profile supporter in Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, who claimed that Lake was a “political target” in a letter to President Trump advocating for his pardon. Thus far, no one of similar political stature has stood up for Sparks.