On April 22, Just after opening the Kamala Food Store in Hudson, , a customer came in to pre-pay $20 for gasoline. Moments later, he came back into the store to complain that the pump wouldn't give him any gas.
Station employee Jigar Patel used a long dipstick to check the gas levels in his underground tanks. That's when it hit him.
Sometime during the night, someone had stolen every drop.
"When he pumped, there was nothing coming out,'' Patel said.
A check of the security camera tape revealed thieves, driving a full-size tanker trunk, had pulled in during the night and pumped the station's tanks dry. Pasco deputies say four gas stations in the county were victimized by the same scheme.
The thefts are deceptively simple: Someone pulls up to the stores in a tanker, then pumps hundreds or thousands of gallons of gas into the vehicle.
"If someone saw a gas tanker at a gasoline service station, they wouldn't think anything of it," said Pasco Sheriff's office spokesman Kevin Doll.
At some stations, the total take amounts to as much as 8 thousand gallons.
As gas prices continue to rise, the thieves are stealing thousands of dollars in gas.
"They should be caught and they should be punished" said Jigar Patel, who has now installed locks on the covers of his underground tanks.
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