Thieves getting creative in filching fuel -New Orleans-Metairie

by Michelle Hunter, The Times-Picayune

Friday June 13, 2008, 12:54 PM

As gasoline thievery goes, the fellow who ripped-off a Texaco station in Metairie was pretty brazen.

Owner Sinh Nguyen said the man somehow jimmied the meter on one of the pumps then came inside and paid $3 for gasoline. His tinkering let him pump far more than $3 worth without the excess fuel registering on the meter. But that wasn't the brazen part.

"He came back and demanded the money back," said Nguyen, whose employee, oblivious to the real cause of the "broken pump," refunded the $3.

A still image taken from a surveillance video shows the alleged gasoline thief at the rigged pump.

Nguyen and his staff didn't realize the pump had been rigged until the next day, by which time the thief had returned to fill up a second car