VW actively deceived regulators in a coordinated manner for months after they started investigating and asking questions about the defeat devices. This is not normal behavior for a car manufacturer or any public company under investigation. They produced tons of fraudulent data, took regulators for fools, and went so far as to stage a recall they knew ahead of time wouldn't solve the problem, all while millions of cars continued spewing cancer-causing diesel fine particulates. It would be shocking if the hammer didn't come down hard in those circumstances.