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- Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -12/+235So they stole $8,100 in gas, wouldn't that be like 5 gallons?
- elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+92The secret is that they kept the Hummer idling while they filled it. The Hummer simply guzzled it all away as it was put in.
- toxicredm, on 10/12/2007, -5/+59Wow, where can I get that key. I just want to know "for educational purposes."
- dexim, on 10/12/2007, -3/+48Can you ever completely fill an idling Hummer?
- CHurst, on 10/12/2007, -9/+47Ha.. using the average gas price for Baltimore, MD (from http://gasbuddy.com @ 11:56 AM EST 5/1/06), 3.005 per gallon, makes it somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,695 gallons stolen
- kidhero, on 10/12/2007, -8/+43$8,100 at cost? so you mean they got away with $8,300 street price worth of gas? OMG
- mikeroySoft, on 10/19/2009, -5/+34In other news, criminals have stolen Billions of dollars from petro-consuming commuters in a scam called 'Price Fixing'.
- emer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Unfortunately its not the stations that are to blame. Stealing from them doesn't really accomplish much since the oil companies get paid either way.... why would they care if gas stations are getting robbed?
- goldenbb, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20I'm so tired of hearing about how great European public transit is. It's not cheap at all. Hello! Europeans pay for it in unbelievably high taxes that have stagnated their economies and led to all kinds of other unintended social consequences. You have outrageously high unemployment (a generation of people who have no work ethic to speak of), and yet we still get this persistent holier than thou "we got something for nothing" attitude? You got conned by control freak schemers, mainly.
Hell, I like visiting Europe, but please, lose the socialism and try more "pay as you go" and cast off the chains already.
Next step for USA: Repeal these usurious gas taxes. Where does the state get off thinking it can nick us so hard and then not fix the roads with the money? In North Carolina, the gas taxes went into the general fund and paid for nonsense such as a Teapot Museum. Such crap... - kybosh, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20Here's the article, for those that don't want to/can't see the video.
http://www.officer.com/article/article.jsp?id=30151&siteSection=1 - john570, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17SniperSlap21 Wrote "The stations should be made to pay the price becase we as people have no other body to respond to."
Oh yea that makes total sense. Screw the little guy who makes the bulk of his profits off the cheesie puffs you come into buy after the gas. That wouldn't hurt the oil companies at all. - kybosh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15The stations themselves make very little profit out the product and have next to no control of the pricing, boycott them or steal from them and you'll just see more stations close and you'll have drive further for your gas.
It's BP, Shell, Texaco etc everyone needs to be complaining about - as well as the government, who take a tidy cut. - LtJimDangle2, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19you, my friend, obviously did not watch the video. RTFA before commenting.
- ArmandoM, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13"If you had any idea of what the police actually do all day, you'd see that it's not possible for them to have a list of license plates to be constantly looking for"
You do realize they keep your licence plates in a database along with your name and address right? - fahadmp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13stations only markup gas about 1 cent to maybe even 10 cents..its not a huge markup
today, they probably only markup a few cents to stay competitive
20% is taxes
60% is crude oil
http://money.howstuffworks.com/gas-price.htm - anorris, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14ExxonMobil is the company that you would need to hit, not the stations. They are the ones who "can't cut prices anymore" and made the largest profit for any company in American history -- ironically, both in the same year. Can't cut anymore my ass.
- TheSoupNazi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13In response to higher gas prices in Europe...
Maybe you don't realize this, but Europe has a far superior public transport system than the U.S. Sure, you pay more for gasoline (around the equivalent of $4.50 / gallon, right?), but the majority of the people who live in suburban areas of Europe have the option of using public transit as a means of getting to and from work. Unfortunately, many Americans don't share this same luxury. And, because the majority of Americans have to drive to and from work every day, gasoline is seemingly a bigger issue for them than for Europeans. - Jeebugorn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14AND....guess what, euorpe has an awesome mass transportation system. i lived in germany for 2 years and never needed a car because i just took the train to wherever i was going...and the train tickets were CHEAP...real cheap. well, that works in europe because all of europe combined is about the size of the east coast states. so we have much more land to consider...so we CANT have the mass transit system like europe. if we did, i wouldnt mind paying $5 a gallon for gas, because i would only fill up my SUV maybe once a month.
- dexim, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15We pay about the same price you do. Our gas prices are kept low because they are federally subsidized. so we just pay for it with our federal taxes. So, we still pay it, it's just a more round-about way of doing it.
- EvilMinx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Gas stations on average make about $.10 a gallon. They do NOT make more when gas prices go up. In fact if you figure the pay at the pump with a credit card they pay less (credit card companies make about 1-3% on each purchase). Stealing from a gas station owner does no good.
- anonatron, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13I would check ebay for the next few days!
+++++Gas $2 per gallon! DUTCH! Local pickup only!+++++ - matts0344, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12He DID get the license plates, so I don't understand why the police don't go after them. They still broke the law, why does it matter if insurance pays for it or not. I'm stupid I guess, don't understand why the police don't find these guys.
- NJank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11a little education perhaps. Those stations are not Owned by the oil companies. They are Franchised stations. Just like the McDonald's next door. They are locally owned and operated. They pay a franchise fee for the right to stick the big sign out front, and set up their location to look like all the others in the same franchise. They run the same profit game as the 'mom and pops'. Their prices are higher because (1) their costs are higher, and (2) there may be a perceived quality enhancement to their product/service, allowing them to put an extra couple pennies on the price and still stay competitive. Locally, gas is a commodity, making it a low margin item. If you think anything you do to the local stations will EVER affect the gas problem you're a very foolish person. Stealing gas is bad for your local prices. It drives up that station's costs. Now, to stay afloat, they may have to raise their prices a tad. When competition is forced to raise prices, the other local stations might have some room to raise there prices as well. The goal of a business is to sell for the highest price that a market will bear, with competition pulling those prices back down. Highly competitive commodities markets like your local gas stations aren't the problem.
- stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Thank you CNN for showing more crooks exactly how to do it. That video was a little TOO informing. I bet this happens more now around the country.
- captaindan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Because our gas prices have tripled in less than ten years, and most of the increase has been in the last year or so. (I'll readily admit that I have no idea how this trend compares with prices in other countries.)
- saleens281, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10for tritium: this is a private gas station. The "oil companies" aren't losing a penny, this guy has already paid them when they delivered the fuel. It's money out of his pocket.
For everyone else:
How the hell do you get 8100$ worth of gasoline into 4 SUV's? I have a feeling this is why the police aren't doing anything. I think you would struggle to even get that much gasoline into the trucks, even with special tanks onboard. For one: the weight. For another: I can't even imagine there's enough physical space... that's the equivalent of 2700 gallons of milk, think about trying to load that into your ford explorer, or even four of them, not gonna happen. - kazolar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9If one more person says that American's should get used to high gas prices because in europe, australia or some other country prices have been like that -- ok guess what. In 2000 a gallon was 1.39 -- its 3.39 now If your gas prices went from 3 bucks 6 years ago to 12 I'd like to see what you'd say. People have the right to be pissed when anything goes through the roof like that, its not a correction for the US to be in line with the rest of the world, becase the oil companies are making a killing at the expense of low and middle class americans, and claim they're doing nothing wrong. And all our president can do is offer them another brake to temporarily suspsend the epa laws -- so it will be cheaper for them to refine oil. When you got the highest offices in the country occupied by 2 former oil men, and oil companies are registering one profit record after another -- the regular working class americans will get pissed.
- ramiro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Why are you guys arguing with a thief?
- soogy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I want to know for educational purposes as well. I'd like to study how long that gas would last me.
On another note, do these guys plan on selling the gas at discount rates? Will we start seeing gas dealers in a neighborhood near you? "Yoo man, we got some hiiiiigh octane." - SouthernDigger, on 10/12/2007, -14/+21It was $8,100 net cost to the gas station. That is his cost...before markup. So these guys got away with even more than that! my idols.
- EABird1013, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7And as long as everyone keeps driving Expeditions and other SUVs it is going to continue to get more expensive.
- HeaDiggrNCharge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Anyone know where I can get the keygen from?
- twinklyJesus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@ f00xx0riz3r
Get a map! Sweden is about the size of Connecticut. You can ride a train from one place to another in about an hour. Trains, bicycles and motorcycles are not practical in a country that is the size of the US. It is about 5,000 Km from one side of the US to the other. You're not talking about "minor inconvenience" here.
It amazes me that Europeans think with such smugness that we cant figure these "simplistic" solutions out. The reality is, that they have a problem with perspective. What works well in a tiny little country in a collection of tiny little countries, won't be the solution for those who live in very very large countries where high population densities DO have trains, subways and mass transit, but the majority of the country is so spread out that no government could supply mass transit. Also it would be so expensive to build that type of infrastructure that it would bankrupt the entire world doing it. - EricAnderton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yup, it would have taken a lot of time to pull this off, so something is definitely fishy here.
My guess is the cashier was on the take, and allowed this to happen. As another digger posted above, Baltimore is overrun with bold-faced, broad-daylight crime, so as long as the stakes were low enough, all parties involved were aware that they were beyond (practical) reproach - the total theft was less than $10,000 at the current retail price of gasoline. To make this theory even more plausible, keep in mind that a lot of smaller stations only have a single attendant inside a bullet-proof Plexiglas box; that means fewer people on the take and less risk of anyone screwing up the story with the cops.
Say you have a second party charging only $20 for a full tank at the unlocked pump, which is conveniently labeled "full service". If the average car/SUV has a 16 gallon tank (a *steal* at $20), that works out to 175 vehicles for a total haul of $3500. So the attendant, barely clearing minimum wage, would be more than happy to have $1750 for the day - even if that meant filing a police report when its all over. Its far more likely that they made a lot more than that.
So yea, for 150-200 vehicles, this was an *all day* scam. The attendant had to know. - keyrat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@Lyph4
you pay for emergency services through taxes, schools also. would you rather these be on a pay as you go basis? people like to pretend that it'd be better if we payed the bare minimum tax, and just picked up the tab on everything whenever we want it, but it's been shown in this country that you can't trust private enterprise to take care of citizens. your idea would work well in a country the size of a well-populated US county, where maybe you could encourage only the hardest and most responsible workers to partake. everywhere else it would result in widespread poverty.
the part about freedom is just propaganda. anyone who's been to europe knows that for the most part you are more free, and you can really feel it. - NJank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Hey... us Baltimorons resent that statement. We take pride in misrepresenting our crime statistics to make the mayor's crime reduction policies a success! That wasn't filed as a theft, there's no proof yet of theft, it's simply a ... um ... billing error, to be handled in a civil court if at all. Yeah, that's it.
- KamikazeH20mln, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Living in Baltimore, everyone is trying to find this gas station now to get the hookup. I drive a Honda Civic, and it took $35 to fill my tank while I get 30+ miles per gallon. Hey, you paid for the bigger car...expect to pay even more later down the road.
- zirtbow, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13Mirror of video plz? (I know this will get buried but I had to ask.)
- tritium, on 10/12/2007, -17/+21You realize, of course, that this is just $8,100 dollars that our oil and gas companies are NOT going to pay themselves. Every theft like this just makes the gas prices higher for the rest of us -- in my opinion, these theives, and those like them, should not be celebrated, but berated. They're making life more expensive for the rest of us.
- NJank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4it's called feeding the troll my friend. been around since usenet, and it'll stay around forever, everywhere, as the result of the fire-and-forget nature of internet 'discussions'. digg is no exception, and shouldn't be expected to be.
- dexim, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7According to the article, it was 2,800 gallons.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Did you forget to finish your sentence?
The company's what? - randf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4and i'm sure that 8 mpg, 10,000 pound Ford Excretion is always loaded with 5-6 people going on a long distance trip....never just you solo driving 2 blocks to go thru the McDonalds drive-thru while talking on your cell phone.
- screensnot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"in holland it's called Benzine" - RickySan65
What do you guys call benzene in Holland then?
Benzene is a hydrocarbon that is sometimes added to gasoline as an octane booster (it's been outlawed for that use in the USA, BTW). But benzene and gasoline are two different things. - afex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5you could buy an explorer and put the expedition badge on it if you'd like. it's win/win, you'd get slightly better mileage and your manhood (read:drivable penis) will stay intact.
- screensnot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's short for gasoline, the part of petroleum oil that gets used in most cars (the rest of the petroleum is distilled into other products like kerosene, jet fuel, wax, etc.).
- r121, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7@Jeebugorn
According to Wikipedia
Area of United States: 9,631,418 km^2
Area of Europe: 10,395,504 km^2 - NJank, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5steel gas? I've heard of using aluminum alloys as a storage body for hydrogen, but please, share this new technology. We have tons of iron, maybe this is a miracle alternative fuel of which you speak?
- ericpp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I bet someone disabled the pump and left it free for everyone to use.
Otherwise it seems impossible for 4 SUVs to make off with $8100 worth of gas - interiot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@Urusai, so why isn't petty theft/shoplifting/burglary on the rise? If thieves don't get caught, isn't there an incentive to steal?
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