A strange gas station scam in Minnesota didn’t hurt customers, exactly: it benefited customers. The scam victim was the owner of the gas station, who thought that they had sold the place to credible new owners. Instead, after a glorious one-day sale with everything in the convenience store half off and gas about forty cents per gallon below the local market price, the sale collapsed. The owner says that the down payment check bounced, the buyers disappeared, and $50,000 in cash was missing…along with the gas and merchandise that local customers pounced on during that too-good-to-be-true sale.

According to the all-knowing crowdsourced site GasBuddy, gas prices in that part of Minnesota are $4.29 per gallon today. On Saturday, customers lined up all the way out to the street to buy gas priced at only $3.85.

The pretend gas station purchase is a bad crime and all, but this crime really caught the attention of local authorities because of the fuel sale. It’s against the law to undercut competing gas stations so dramatically, you see.

The question remains: was this an elaborate scam, or the biggest convenience store robbery of all time?

Bizarre Theft Leads to Carver Co. Investigation [KTSP]

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