I work for an automotive parts manufacturer and one branch of our operations got fined $87 Million for price fixing some years ago. There was an investigation that spanned 4 countries that led up to the raid of company HQ records by the DOJ in the US and similar agencies in other countries. That was chump change compared to what happened with VW recently though. So yeah it does happen and it can go on for years before it gets caught (if it ever gets caught).