A Nebraska woman allegedly found a lucrative quirk at a gas station pump — double-swipe the rewards card and get free gas!
Unfortunately for her, you can’t do that, prosecutors said. The 45-year-old woman was arrested March 6 and faces felony theft charges accusing her of a crime that cost the gas station nearly $28,000.
Prosecutors say the woman exploited the system over a period of several months. Police learned of the problem in October when the loss-prevention manager at Bosselman Enterprises reported that the company’s Pump & Pantry in Lincoln had been scammed.
$28,000 of gas in a few months? Yeah no shit. Find something like this and keep it to personal use if you must. Probably could’ve kept it under the radar or an amount small enough to settle without criminal charges if caught.
Nah.
Figure out how it works, don’t use personal card, get a new one (getting a rewards card to someone who doesn’t actually exist shouldn’t be too hard), then exploit the fuck out of it.
Remember to use balaclava at the pump, and don’t use your own car.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say wouldn’t work anyway.
Stations have cameras.
Cars have plates.
They’d track the car to the owner and the owner would point fingers at who borrowed the car.
The camera would show the face of who was pumping the gas.
It’s not easy to read license plates from normal CCTV cameras unless they are pointing at the right spot. I used to install them at gas stations and the owners were almost always surprised by this. The best they can usually get is make, model, and color. Maybe newer cameras are better but I’m guessing the vast majority are using cheap cameras.
You can read license plates with a 5mp camera, you just need to have a narrow fov. If you have a wide angle lens, then you’re not going to be able to read them without more resolution.
Right. And most installs have a wide lens to capture as much as possible. Otherwise, you’d need a lot more cameras and gas station owners are cheap as hell from my personal experience.
What if you just went on foot with 5 gallon containers, didn’t do it frequently, and never went to the same gas station a second time?
Might be an option. But if you never went a second time you’d run out of stations that are reasonably close. But yeah going on foot and not doing it a lot might be an option… Unless the card was in your name lol
Just steal plates of another car. Not really a big deal or hard to pull off. And even without a mask, you can use just basic shades and ballcap.
I mean, the risk of getting caught is still very much there, but I’d say it’s very much lower than if you use your own plates, your own rewards car and a clear face.
Using someone else’s license plate is a felony I’m pretty sure
Which part of my earlier comment led you to believe that I was suggesting any of that was legal?
If you don’t use your own car, how are you profiting
I think the folks of Always Sunny had a solution for this a while back.
We’ll need a wild card
It’s a long con. Get revenge on your enemy by making friends with them and filling their gas tank
Pump it out?
You’re forgetting the video footage. They can reconstruct everything from there.
Keep it low and spread it around. Things never come out perfect and nobody notices small discrepancies because there is more important work to do than worry about it.
Lots of extra work outside of the extra rewards card, when you all have to do is: wear a medical mask, and walk up and use fuel containers.
True, true.
Work smart, not hard.
That’s not smart or hard.
Smart is knowing that service stations log your licence plates with cameras
I’m saying it’s smarter to put on a mask and get a few canisters, instead of going through a lot of trouble switching plates/cars.
What is this weird Lemmy world? Are you seriously saying that you’d wear a mask at the pump (already a huge LOOK AT ME I’M SUSPICIOUS problem), use someone else’s car, drive to where your car is parked, then siphon the gas into your car…all to get a free tank of gas?
Not at all.
I’m saying that’s how the people who would like to steal some should do it.
Also, a free tank of gas (where I live) would be worth like 100-150€, so not insignificant to non-spoiled people