Gas prices are high; it’s a frustrating fact. Even with prices dropping in the country as of the time of this writing, it’s still a hard pill to swallow. It’s no surprise really that people would be attempting to steal gas then, heck it happens even when prices aren’t incredibly high. You’ll hear stories about people trying to siphon petrol out of another person’s tank or maybe using stolen debit cards to buy gas, but there has to be only so much you can steal in one go right? There has to be a limit. Well, what if that limit approached 200 gallons?
It’s a brazen and bold crime, but Daniel Ramossantoyo and Andres Berruete tried to pull it off. At a Shell gas station in San Bernadino County, the two men tried to steal 200 gallons of gasoline in their pick-up truck. What kind of truck can hold 200 gallons of gas? Well, if you’re talking about just a regular, run of the mill private vehicle, none of them can. That’s why the two men had to custom rig their truck to carry out the heist.
The two men apparently tampered with the pump to get it to eject gas without having to pay for it. As for where they put it, the men had crafted a hidden gas tank that was within the bed of the truck. Not surprisingly, a witness thought this looked incredibly suspicious and contacted police. The suspects were arrested, and linked to a similar theft that happened in Phelan previously.
Something similar also happened in Florida, when a man was accused of stealing 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel over several different trips to a Circle K. Once again, a device was used to tamper with the pump itself, allowing it to pump diesel over its 100 gallon limit. Because this vehicle being used however was a semi truck, there were many more places to hide extra tanks to store the mass amounts of fuel. At least this criminal was clever enough to have an accomplish to dive up alongside him to obscure what he was doing from the workers inside the store.
Long story short, if you seem someone taking an excruciatingly long time to fill up their tank or it looks like they’re trying to stick a fuel nozzle where it shouldn’t go, maybe give someone inside the station a heads up. It may be against the law to steal, but it’s also incredibly rude to hold people up at the pump for that long. Other people need to gas and go too, buddy!
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