Gas thieves have stolen over 5,000 gallons of fuel from the Open Pantry Citgo in Wauwatosa, WI according to WauwatosaNow.com.
The district manager of Open Pantry Citgo, 11216 W. Blue Mound Road, reported that 4,909 gallons of gas, valued at $19,374, was removed from the underground tanks sometime between July 16 and Aug. 13.
He told police the pressure of the tanks, supply and feed lines have been tested with no indication of cracks or seeping, and the petroleum supply company has verified the delivered amounts.
Police in Wauwatosa thing the culprits were customers who prepaid for their gas and then tampered with the pumps in order to “acquire more gas than the pumps should allow.” Naturally, they didn’t explain the details of this technique.
Gas Thieves Take Nearly 5,000 Gallons [WauwatosaNow] (Thanks, Austin!)
(Photo: northernplateguy )
More From Consumerist
-
Somewhere, There’s A Massive, Chocolatey, Delicious Black Market For Nutella
-
Comfort Food Crime Wave Continues: Man Steals Truckload Of Soup
-
Picky Thieves Steal $19K Worth Of Girl Scout Cookies — All In Thin Mints & Shortbread
-
Make Sure That Mailbox Isn’t Sticky Before Dropping Your Mail Into It
-
Thieves Boost $2 Million In Wii Game Consoles From Warehouse Using Facility’s Forklifts
Try #2 in Jalopnik’s The Five Best Ways To Steal Gas.
[jalopnik.com]
“Instructions: Pull a trailer fitted with a trap door, a large tank and a pump over a gas station’s underground reservoir. While you pretend to make repairs under the hood, have an assistant open the trailer’s trap door, insert a pipe down into the reservoir and then pump out the gas.”
@East_Coast_Midwesterner: Yeah, those f’ing indians ought to learn proper english or go back to their native….
…(nevermind)..
@Fuzz:
“We used to take dips before opening”
In the gasoline? damn you guys were rich!
I’m from Wisconsin. It’s pronounced “OPEN PANTY”, in “WA WA TOE SA.”
@East_Coast_Midwesterner: Is it Walk-a-sha?
@usa_gatekeeper: Ohh, can we say hazardous site???
5000 gallons?
I smell employee misconduct. Time for some good ole police investigating.
@Corporate-Shill: i agree…
apparently it’s also increasingly common (at least according to my local news) in the poorer neighborhoods of north texas to stick a thin pipe in the gas tank of the parked car of an unsuspecting victim, use their mouths as a vacuum and actually suck the gas into the tube, then blow it out into a container to collect the gasoline until they’ve emptied the tank, then fill their own empty tanks with their newfound source of free gas…
it’s really sickening, what some greedy people do to others simply to get their hands on some free gas… i understand that prices are high, but honestly…
@East_Coast_Midwesterner: I know that the native americans created their written language somewhere around the 1900′s. From that I deduce it was the crazy French who wrote Native American words the way they thought the should be spelled in French.
How saner the world would’ve been if a Southern Bubba had spelled out what he heard.
how do they even know it is theft? maybe their machine is just broken and is giving out more gas than it’s supposed to?
@dweebster:
Go back to their native Russia?
[en.wikipedia.org]
maybe they should have closed the pantry.
hahaha I just had to say it.
too risky for someone knowing enough to crack pay card security.
you’d be caught on camera buying gas sooner or later.
my guess is whoever cracked it just sold the cards to others. it wouldn’t be hard to sell prepaid gas cards these days!
a) Sounds like someone took the “Open Pantry” seriously.
b) Boy, there sure have been a lot of $5.00 pre-pays for pump #3 today….
In my zit-faced gas pumping phase, we used to check fuel levels by sticking a 12-foot long “yardstick” in the tanks every day; this would have been noticed in a day, two days tops. I guess the old ways are the best ways sometimes.
These pumps can be hacked.
Back in 2003 a local gas station installed pumps that were either pre-pay or debit/credit card.
Without giving away the details, I was able to use “prepaid” cards 3x for each one purchased, effectively allowing me to steal gas.
I took the time to tell the manager that I was able to do this and she stated that she was not surprised and that 100 of gallons of gasoline were showing missing each month. I suggested to her that I would be willing to preform one of these to show her how and she stated that the owners were @ssholes and she didn’t care.
I continued filling my car for several months this way with no concern for the cameras. Eventually, the station closed down and my engine blew up …
The point is, these can be hacked … usually it is with insider knowledge. In this instance I just happended upon a flaw in the programming of these stations pumps.
PS. Don’t try this yourself … its not woth the karmic price.
Please someone post how to do this…. I wont do it I promise…..
Its about time to bleed the oil companies dry, like they have been doing to us for so long.
The tags say “Bad Consumer”, but the theives didn’t even buy anything!
I don’t see what the big deal is…i mean $20,000 worth is like what – a full tank these days?
I doubt there was any “snatching” going on, but pumping.