Six men have been arrested after allegedly stealing roughly $60,000 of fuel from gas stations in Florida.
According to NBC News, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said “Operation Empty Tank” concluded last week after police arrested Luis Alcade-Hernandez, Albert Aleman-Gonzalez, Nestor Flores-Rodriguez, Javier Penate-Berbe, Jesus Andres Perez-Cueto and Danys Vazquez-Sosa.
Chronister also said the seventh man who is allegedly the ringleader, Willian Penate-Arencibia, is still at large, as NBC News reported.
“After reviewing surveillance cameras, each gas station observed the same strange behavior, where a group of seven trucks would continually cycle through a single gas pump for more than 12 hours at each station,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
The outlet explained detectives found that someone was “breaking into gas pumps and installing homemade devices that disabled the mechanism that calculates the cost per gallon.”
The sheriff’s statement continues, “For pennies per gallon, or in some cases no money at all, seven suspects were able to dispense thousands of dollars in gasoline.”
Chronister and other law enforcement believe “these men are responsible for far more money in theft due to their operation running nearly every day of the week.”
He added, “This was very clearly an organized crime ring, and these suspects were not new to the business.”
NBC News noted the suspects were selling gas to truck drivers for half the price, citing the sheriff’s office.
“Don’t think for a minute that these suspects were tampering with the gas pumps in order to ease the burden on everyday drivers,” Chronister said. “No. They were in this only to line their own pockets.”
The news comes less than a month after a group of cars stole nearly 400 gallons of gas from a gas station in North Carolina, as IJR reported.
Owner of the Bizzy Bee Grocery Store and Gas Station in High Point, North Carolina, Hardik Patel, told CNN, “I’ve been in business for 15 years and owned other gas stations.”
He added, “I have never seen something like this. It wasn’t free, they were stealing.”
Additionally, Patel said if he loses “more than I make, there might be some things to think about.”
The Hill reported the average price of a gallon of gas in the United States was $4.17 as of Tuesday, citing AAA.