Complete and utter hogwash.

Not to be a spelling nazi, but there's a typo: "Police in Wauwatosa thing" (should be think).

Hugo Chávez won't be happy

arrr, me smells a rat...

Don't the have security cameras or something? I would think that (assuming this was a gradual theft of 5,000 gallons and not just some random customer with a tanker driving off with 5,000 gallons in a single trip) that you'd notice missing petrolium well before you reached the 5,000 gallon mark. I mean, I'd think I would notice if even a fifth of that was missing. I also have no idea how they track how much gasoline is kept underground, but I still think they should have some way of noticing that.

On a side note, how do you say the name of that town? Wow-a-tosa??

where do you put 5000 gallons of gas? That's 200 25-gallon fillups.

Or do you just drive a tanker truck up at 3:00 AM when there's nobody around?

@BrianDaBrain: [www.merriam-webster.com]

I tried to tell investors that demand is not going down, it's just that theft is going up....

@Marshfield:
It could have been stolen in small amounts over a couple of weeks.

Most of the gas pump POS are still run by Windoze NT4 SP4 or 6... *shudder*

At least the ones around ND and MN seem to be.

$20,000? About 10 gallons of gas?

@chipslave: Hey, it could be worse - they could be running Windoze Me.

I'll go off the deep end and say that the gas station is shamming. They aren't reporting the cash purchases and saying the crooks have figured out how to hack the pumps.*

*For those who don't have a sense of humor, that was a joke.

I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE

Well at least $20,000 in fuel isn't very much fuel these days...

@FrankenPC:

I understand what you did there.

@BrianDaBrain: That's EXACTLY how you say it.

Close Brian. It's wow-wah-toe-sah

@BrianDaBrain:

Grew up near there.

Locals call it, "Wow-Wa-Tow-Sa" or just Tosa.

I grew up in Waukesha. Try that on for size. and no, it is not Wa-Key-sha.

F-ing Indians and their crazy names.

Damn drunken 'sconies...

Its possible to do and not as difficult as most might think....

It's going to be very difficult though to prove.

@East_Coast_Midwesterner: Waukesha: Wah-ka-shaw, right?

My favorite to say is Oconomowoc.

Back on topic, something sounds fishy here. Nearly 5000 gallons of gas stolen gradually over 4 weeks seems like a lot. Is hacking into the gas pump really that easy to do without drawing attention to yourself?

Totally poor station management. We used to take dips before opening, at shift change, and at the end of the day and verify amounts with what the pumps said. Every day. It doesn't take long, and they would have noticed something fishy the first time this happened. Not a month. Not trying to blame the victim here, but fool me once, shame on you, fool me for a month, tough f*in' luck.

@mzhartz:

My cousins live in Oconomowoc. It might be hard to say, but it's really easy to spell.

Anyway, I bet the pumps are faulty. Or that the station is scamming their insurance company in some way. You have to report the fuel stolen in order to make any claim.

It's a scam that can be done at very few gas stations. it would have been split up into 400 +/- transactions. Someone told me about the scam a few months ago and i didn't believe him until he showed me. I'd give details but that would be "bad consumer" of me.

Happened here in Dallas, too. Thieves used a remote control (used by gas pump installers/servicers) to reprogram the pumps.

@East_Coast_Midwesterner: I believe it is pronounced "the 'sha". Or "City of Losers", take your pick. I say that as a former Northstar.

@FatLynn: That really is the best line in that movie.

@Fuzz: Same here, but we stuck the tanks once a day, every morning. The results had to be sent in by a certain time so corporate could report to what was, at the time, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (or was it Committee?). They were able to take your previous day's inventory, add any deliveries, subtract your sales, and come up with what your new starting inventory was. If you were short, either someone was stealing or the tank was leaking.

From what I understand, if the pumps are old enough (with the manual dials instead of electronic readouts), there's a way to stick a screwdriver in the gears so the pump works but the wheels for the price don't move. This may be how they were making the pump dispense free gas, but it doesn't explain how the store didn't notice after more than 100 gallons was missing.

I never worked at a gas station, so this is taken with a grain of salt...
But, if someone is taking gas, wouldn't it report to you the owner, the amount of gas pumped, the price of the gas pumped, and the pump used???

So if someone reprogrammed the machine, wouldn't it still report the false information?

Maybe this place only has manual pumps? Though I thought I read on here that the manual pumps only went up to 1.99 and 9/10ths...

I think Lifehacker needs an article on how to do this.

I also don't buy this. Since the district manager (and not the station manager) noticed this, I'd guess the station employees (manager included) were letting their friends fill up for free.

Interesting side note: I grew up six blocks away from that station, and walked past it to go to school every day for almost 10 years.

I'll believe it when I see how it's done.

Seriously, please show me how it's done.

It's amazing how lot of people think it's ok to rip off gas stations, yet you people complain and whine to no end when you think you've been wronged. It's very easy to rig the pumps, go Google it. Basically anyone can program these pumps without ever setting a foot inside the store.

Some of you seem to think that gas stations are the ones making huge amounts of money off high gas prices, yet $20,000 worth of gas getting stolen would kill most independent owners.

co-sign badhatharry. that post would be the best ever.

Sounds like some people-friends were getting some free gas. Maybe the employees and boss decided to filler up for free. The District Manager caught the descrepency and the Store Manager reported it stolen... Sounds like an insurance scam to me...

@schwnj:
The fuel pumped would not have registered on the POS system. Really hard to catch until you do monthly inventory/environmental reports, or have a manager that's really on top of things. Not saying that it can't be a inside job, just saying that it can happen.

I call bullsh*t. All stations are required to have tank monitors that tell you how many inches of fuel, gallons of fuel, ullage, how much water, et al. You get those every morning, and you'd notice long before you hit the 5k mark if you're at an even moderately busy station. You'd freakin' run out of gas.

We had a situation here in Ann Arbor Michigan a couple years ago. A Meijer gas station was the victim. A manager had figured out swiping a drivers license at the pump acted the same as swiping a credit or debit card and of course cost the 'shopper' zero dollars as not many people have money in their drivers license accounts LOL.

So, manager told a couple friends who told a couple more and well you get the idea. Thousands of gallons were 'missing'. Trouble for the scammers was the machine was at least collecting info off of the drivers licenses used in the heists.

BUSTED.

@Inglix_the_Mad:
"...was removed from the underground tanks sometime between July 16 and Aug. 13."

Almost a month time, it'll be kind of hard to notice little over 100 gallons a day.

I live in Wauwatosa ("Tosa") and have been to that station recently. My fill up didn't seem any cheaper, so I guess I didn't get the 'lucky' pump, or at least wasn't aware of the scam..... Seems like an awful lot of gas gone missing - I used to work at a station too, and we checked the levels every night. There must be more to the story. I'll share any neighborhood gossip here!

There's another town nearby where the owner didn't pay the gas distributor for all his underground tanks, and essentially ran them dry, before they could otherwise close him down, I guess, then left the country. We were figuring about $100,000 worth he got away with.

@BrianDaBrain: a big stick with graduated markings on it

Thieves? Or heroes? I commend these fine gentlemen, now if only everyone would start stealing gas...it would sure as hell be a lot more effective than those ridiculous "avoid fueling up on said date" attempts.

actually, this is utter simple... these days we have electronic pumps... well, u know those guys at the department of energy, when you complain to them about a gas station that seems to not give you the right amount of what youre paying for... they come down and actually test those pumps... they have electronic cards and pins (not credit cards by the way and by no means it charges the department of energy aka free gas for testing) that they slide in the card slots and lets them pull to any quantity of gas... some machines dont even used these cards, just an electronic code... from what i heard from the truck drivers of a tanker, these guys protect these codes like crazy... cause or else... someone is getting free gas... but dont take my word for it... im merely twisting your leg... =P

The summary says "over 5000 gallons" but the quote says 4909. Oops?

@FatLynn: "I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE"

Indeed!

See the real issue is people have been filling their gas up at 4:00 am when it's cooler. As we know, cooler gas gives you more gas....right?

Here's one way to do it:
[www.click2houston.com]

And that's not the only story I've heard like that, nor the only method.

Somehow I doubt it was stolen 2 gallons at a time...there would have to be a whole band of tech-savvy criminals to pull that off.

I would vote for an employee letting their friends fill up for free or perhaps somebody making repeat visits to fill up their Hummer with a siphon hose.

@allthatsevil: And who would know that the gasoline tanker sitting there at 2 AM is taking gas out of the tanks instead of putting it in.

About 3,500 gallons of fuel delivered in July to a small corner gas station in Milford, Massachusetts, seeped into the ground shortly after delivery.

This then led to the revelation that 10,000 gallons from at least the preceding eight days was "unaccounted for".