Gasoline and diesel thefts are the crime du jour
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Submitted by dyawger on Tue, 2008-04-01 17:09. |
It's an eternal verity that crooks steal things that are especially valuable. The item of choice these days seems to be gasoline or diesel fuel. It's becoming the crime du jour for today's crooks, as Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin would say. Thieves will go to great lengths to steal diesel fuel, as evidenced by a report from the Merced County Sheriff's Department, Sometime over the past two weekends, someone broke into a construction site in the Santa Nella area and stole diesel fuel from two bucket loaders parked there. The first weekend they stole 60 gallons of fuel, and 170 gallons on the second visit. At more than $4 a gallon, that's getting close to $1,000 worth of purloined fuel.
It's not as if the construction company was making it easy. There’s a fence surrounding the property, and the owners even dug a trench around the site to limit access, but the crooks used a four-wheel-drive vehicle to make it to the tanks holding the fuel. The company is thinking of hiring a private security firm to watch the site during the off-hours. As Pazin would say, you can't put a serial number on diesel fuel.
Syndicate
Hey in Europe they have this
Hey in Europe they have this purple dye. All fuels sold for off-road use, e.g. construction and farming pay no road tax. Well the dyed fuel if stolen and used in a vehicle which is used on public roads, this dye permeates the metal and plastics used in the filler neck and tank. If your stopped and purple dye is observed in the filler neck area, it's a huge fine. They might not prove from where it was stolen, or even if the farmer siphoned off his own un-taxed fuel for his persoanl car, you get a fuel ticket and a fix it ticket to have ALL the fuel tank components replaced before the car can be used on the road again. It works VERY WELL!!! No one wants to chance it as the dye is permanent and remains even after several re-fills of Legal fuel has been run through the car.