1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit. Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go for clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn't mean this is one of those, but a class action complaint should not just blindly be trusted.
2) There is a strong theme of "of course execs lie cheat steal at every turn" and I also think this narrative should be questioned. Ethics aside, the level of compliance in a public company is insanely high. Execs are already rich. To risk jailtime, which fraud can lead to, you'd need to see something more existential than slightly increasing margins on used van sales.
I felt inclined to comment as I've been on the other end of articles like this, and it is astounding the level of mind reading people have done into my intent and actions on things that were factually just not true at all. I also truly would find it very difficult to commit a broad organizational fraud even if I wanted to and my company is only 500 people.
If I had to make a prediction, the case is less black and white than it appears, and if there was fraud, it was probably committed at a non-executive level by the person whose P&L was directly tied to these resales. Or, it was done independently by the much smaller leasing company where this was more existential to them. It is highly unlikely to be a Fed Ex executive-level conspiracy.
I'm sure there are a few counter examples, such as say the VW emissions scandal, but I would counter these were the exceptions that proved the rule and in general when the C-level was involved was much higher stakes.
VW is in the business of selling vehicles, and has a real interest there to push the envelope as much as possible.
FedEx is not in the business of selling used vehicles. These vehicle sales likely don't impact their core business in the slightest - making an organization-wide scandal just silly to even think about.
Looking online, these types of "vans" sell for anywhere between $5,000 and $30,000 (with 4 digit miles)[1]. Seriously... FedEx isn't going to blink at any of this.
These class actions are always brought by bottom-feeding lawyers that use serial-plaintiffs. The reality is the class action bit will be retracted, and the lawyers, err, plaintiff will receive a "go the hell away please" payment. That's the game here...
[1] https://www.auctiontime.com/listings/trucks/auction-results/...
As I understand it (sorry, I don't have a citation handy) was that VW was gaming the tests, but in order to make their vehicles' operations MORE efficient. That is, the tests are dumb because they concentrate on start-up emissions with less attention to warm running. VW wanted to also optimize the warm running, but to do that they had to game the software to still appear to optimize only for the cold start.
That is, aside from the ethical problem of cheating the regulation (a big aside to be sure), they were acting more responsibly than most.
VW's cheating is in essence the cars have two modes to run the engine; compliance mode and performance mode, and they run in compliance mode when the car starts up until the steering wheel is turned (more or less).
In compliance mode, the engine control follows the rules to meet the emissions test standards. In performance mode, operating temperature is allowed to increase, which increases performance, increases fuel efficiency, idles better, etc, but increased operating temperature leads to more NOx emissions.
Additional, for models with diesel emissions fluid, performance mode injected much less DEF than compliance mode; DEF reduces operating temperature as well as directly reacting withe NOx. This reduced use of DEF allowed a smaller DEF tank to be used; regulations require passenger car DEF tanks to have enough capacity for normal use within the regular service interval; if the vehicle was operating in compliance mode the whole time, you'd need to fill the DEF tank between oil changes (or have a larger tank, which needs to fit somewhere).
In the end, the big tradeoff is fuel efficiency (and therefore CO2 emissions) vs NOx emissions; which is a fine tradeoff to consider, but you can't give drivers what they want and regulators what they want without cheating.