For a few hours during the overnight shift, a gas station in Illinois gave away an awful lot of free fuel, as a screwed-up (or screwed-with) pump was only charging customers a penny a gallon.

Yes, for only $.011 per gallon, customers at a Shell station in Woodstock, IL, could fill up their entire cars with pocket change and apparently the cashier working at the station did not notice.

The news even got posted to a local radio station’s Facebook page, complete with photo:

When a morning shift employee realized what was going on, she tried to correct the problem immediately.

“The first thing I did was run outside this morning to make sure the pumps were OK,” she tells the Northwest Herald. “It’s not good for business.”

Woodstock Police said they noticed a long line of cars waiting to get into the gas station but didn’t initially know that it was because of the glitch at the pump. The officers shooed off the vehicles that were screwing up traffic only to find more cars getting in line at the station. That’s when they realized there was something fishy going on.

“The clerk didn’t appear to be aware [of the price change],” explains one officer. “We made him aware of the situation and instructed him to shut off his pumps and fix the problem.”

It was ultimately the police who decided to hit the emergency shut-off button on the pumps, putting an end to the free gas giveaway at the Shell station.

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