Troy Lake was born and raised in Wyoming, where his father owned an automotive shop. Troy, who is now 65 years old, also went into the family business. He eventually moved to Colorado and opened Elite Diesel. By all accounts, he lived a quiet family life with his wife, Holly, and their son, TJ. He was also the “go-to mechanic for over-the-road truckers and others running diesel engines.”
Until 2018. One day in October of that year, the Lakes and one of their employees were enjoying a meal at a local Olive Garden when the federal government executed a search warrant on Elite Diesel. They watched via an app on their phones that accessed the shop’s cameras.
“It looked like a military operation,” Holly told Cowboy State Daily. She said black SUVs were lined up outside, and “agents in tactical gear” raided the place, going through every corner of the building, rifling through their equipment, and reading their personal files.
After what the Lakes call the “raid,” nothing happened for several years. The family eventually decided to move back to Wyoming, taking Elite Diesel with them. They even contacted the feds to let them know they were moving and stayed in touch, trying to do everything on the up-and-up.
But today, Troy Lake sits in federal prison in Colorado, where he has spent the last six months.
So what did he do that’s so bad? Was his shop part of some sort of money laundering scheme? Was he using it as a base for human trafficking? Was he hiding murdered bodies in there?
Nope. Troy was helping truckers by removing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-mandated emissions systems that were preventing their trucks from operating correctly.
According to TJ, during the mid-2000s, shortly after the EPA created stronger emissions standards on heavy diesel trucks, drivers began having problems with brand-new vehicles. They’d bring those trucks to Troy, asking if he could fix them. He found that the problem was these new systems, which were built to limit exhaust by recirculating dirty air. They may have helped with emissions, but they were killing the engines’ lifespans.
Troy learned how to disable them, and word got around. Soon, he had a huge customer base, and according to court documents, he performed 344 deletes between 2017 and 2020. Here’s more from Cowboy State Daily:
In the years that followed, manufacturers started adding diesel particulate filters to meet emissions standards. Then they added selective catalytic reduction filters and called for diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), a chemical treatment, usually urea-based, used to reduce nitrogen oxide output.
As the EPA heightened its emissions restrictions and manufacturers built more complex filtration and recirculation systems around them, Troy Lake’s “deletes” grew more sophisticated too.
The business spent around $350,000 on research and development. That wasn’t just for performing the deletes, but for determining how the techs could make the engines run even cleaner through their tuning, said Holly. They spent $325,000 on an EPA test bench.
And they put more than $1 million into other sophisticated equipment like engine and chassis dynamometers. But those don’t count strictly as investment into deletion technology, Holly clarified, since the shop used them for numerous other jobs.
Other mechanics had Troy finish their own deletions. They sounded him for help on tricky problems, and they referred their customers to him, court documents say.
Some of his customers have called him a hero. One was hauling 120 calves across the country when his truck nearly caught on fire due to the emissions system. It could have killed him and his livestock. That customer removed the filter himself and paid Troy $3,000 to “tune the engine.” He claimed that to “make the truck run like the government…wants you to, it’s $27,000.”
Troy said he’d see school buses stuck for hours due to these issues. “I wasn’t doing [deletes] out of malice. I think all of us want cleaner air. But when we’re putting people out of business, there’s got to be a common ground,” he said.
Get these Obama engines out of our trucks and free Troy Lake!
“A 65-year-old Wyoming man is in federal prison for pulling EPA-mandated emissions systems from ailing diesel engines. As the Trump administration inches toward reversing those mandates, Troy Lake’s family is pushing… pic.twitter.com/y5QH3jNGrn
— American Truckers 🚛🦅 (@atutruckers) August 2, 2025
In April of 2024, he was charged with “conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act.” On December 5 of last year, Joe Biden-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Regina Rodriguez handed Lake a 12-month plus one-day sentence in federal prison. He’ll spend the rest of his life as a convicted felon.
And Troy got off easy. Violating the Clean Air Act can actually lead to up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, or a fine calculated based on the amount of money earned from the operation.
Upon handing down the sentence, Judge Rodriguez “noted at that hearing that she’d served prior as counsel for engine manufacturer Cummins,” according to Cowboy State Daily.
It was a fact the Lakes and some of their customers cast as significant: since a common feeling among truckers is that government requirements of costly, high-maintenance emissions systems cripple small business owners and small shops, whereas large manufacturers can absorb the cost shock.
Troy called Cowboy State Daily last month and said, “I wasn’t trying to be, like, a Robin Hood or anything. I was just trying to help people — and the word got out all over the country that I could do it right. Because that’s a lot of it.” He says he spent his and Holly’s 40th anniversary and his birthday in prison, where the food is bad, but he’s allowed to go outside a few times a day if they’re not on lockdown. He also works in the prison’s diesel shop, where he’s earned the praises of his supervisor.
As a matter of fact, his automotive worker supervisor Bobby Knutson wrote a letter on Troy’s behalf. You see, the Lake family is asking Donald Trump for a pardon. And Knutson wholeheartedly agrees that he should get one. Anyone in this country with any common sense should think so, too.
A man sits in federal prison — not for violence or fraud, but for helping truckers bypass burdensome emissions regulations. You won’t see this story in the mainstream media. That’s what sets us apart.
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