In my experience compliance departments make sure you're compliant within reason. They aren't going to go out of their way to determine if you're cheating unless they've been mandated to due to prior internal or industry incidents. Even in companies where they have to audit controls because of regulatory obligations they're only going to audit what they're required to. If you find a way to outsmart the controls or checks and balances they're not going to notice until you slip up or you're otherwise caught.
>...and all outside verification labs being in cahoots.
Does this have to be true? They would only need to apply the cheating behavior for the lab testing the way they did for regulatory testing.
And VW suspended nine middle managers. I think it's less about blaming the engineers and more about deflecting blame away from senior management.