A Nebraska woman allegedly found a lucrative quirk at a gas station pump — double-swipe the rewards card and get free gas!
Unfortunately for her, you can’t do that, prosecutors said. The 45-year-old woman was arrested March 6 and faces felony theft charges accusing her of a crime that cost the gas station nearly $28,000.
Prosecutors say the woman exploited the system over a period of several months. Police learned of the problem in October when the loss-prevention manager at Bosselman Enterprises reported that the company’s Pump & Pantry in Lincoln had been scammed.
If you’re poor and you exploit a loophole you receive a felony theft charge. If you’re rich enough you receive no repercussions and possibly a bonus.
No, this isn’t a loophole. She found a way to put the pump into maintence mode and set the price to zero. “The computer let me do it” isn’t much of an excuse. The self checkout at the grocery store lets me tare a steak like it’s bananas, but I’d definitely expect shopplifting charges if I got caught tricking the machine to charge me $0.40/lb for steak so I could fill my bag with steaks. There would be plenty of evidence that what I did was intentional and dishonest.
She exploited this glitch for $28k worth of gas in just 7 months, presumably for profit. That’s way more gas than a single vehicle would consume in that time.
This wasn’t a case of just paying what the screen said she owed. This was a case of gaining unauthorized access to the computer and adjusting the price to zero so she could steal at scale.
Yet when 2008 happened they got a bail out and a pat on the back. Trick a machine? Felony theft charge. Trick the American people? Bail out.
Two things can be true, and you can agree with one and disagree with the other.
Very well. Please clear up the misunderstanding and say the words “the bailouts should never have happened and everyone involved in that disaster should have faced felony charges”
The bailouts should never have happened and everyone involved in that disaster should have faced felony charges.
Now, can you say the words “anyone that steals things of more than $10,000 in value should face felony charges”?
anyone that steals things of more than $10,000 in value should face felony charges.
She didn’t.
Narrator voice: “She did.”
Nope. She broke the law in the sense that all those Wall Street types broke the law with mortgage backed securities.
Why are you defending the two tier justice system?
Oooo, I wanna read them type that. LOL.
I’m not them, I just want to type that anyway.
The bailouts should never have happened and everyone involved in that disaster should have faced felony charges.
It felt good to say, thanks.
Nice
Did the computer let those mortgage backed securities get sold to pension funds? Yes? Guess it isn’t an excuse
Not “presumably for profit”, definitely for profit. The article mentions one person that paid her $500 for about $700 worth of fuel in that 6 months because she was told it was a discount card. She was literally charging other people for the gas directly. And 7400 gallons of gas in 6 months, that’s well over 100k miles with a low ball estimate for fuel economy. She probably pocketed nearly 20k cash in that time.
She got greedy. Back when a buddy and I administered our SWIFT platform there were a couple of well publicized exploits of the system for millions. We discussed how easy it would be to write a script to randomly skim a fraction of a cent off of transactions over a long period of time, just don’t get greedy. No one cares about rounding errors.
If this lady stuck to random fillups for free once every couple of months she probably could have flew under the radar for years and more importantly had a better claim to ignorance if caught.
This is just the plot of office space
Never watched it
You should watch it because this truly is the plot.
I’ll put it on my list. British or American or both?
Office Space, not The Office.
Oh shit that I have seen why have I not drawn the parallel before?! Lol
At first I was with you but I was curious how she used $28,000 worth of gas and I’m kinda not with you anymore. I mean, has is expensive but let’s be realistic, no poor person is buying a year’s wages on gas over 6 months lol
“All told, the card was used 510 times, and more than 7,400 gallons of gas were pumped for free, the probable cause statement said.” The article also says she was letting other people pay her to use her card to get gas - so the gas pumped out free and they paid her a portion of what the gas would have been if they had paid the actual pump. That’s actually not the kind of thing I can really defend as just putting the poor people down.
Maybe they should fix their shitty ass software instead of arresting her?
Surely you don’t actually believe that the police officers that does the arresting are working a secondary job as software developers?
Surely you don’t believe I give a shit - the police work for the capital, and the capital wants to punish her.
The police works for the government. The government operates by laws. The woman clearly, knowingly, and with intent, set out to commit fraud.
No. There’s no doubt in my mind that you give shit about what’s actually factual. That much is obvious.
They didn’t arrest her. The cops did. If she didn’t want to be arrested, she probably shouldn’t have stolen tens of thousands of dollars worth of gas. She’s a thief, plain and simple. We can rail against a justice system that allows the rich to get away with crimes, while also recognizing that this woman is just a thief and there is no need to defend her.
You say thief, I say opportunist
While you’re right, also still sounds like schemes rich business leaders get a wag of a finger over. So it’s not so much about it being too harsh on her, but instead how malicious rich person schemes earn too much leniency.
This is what I thought at first too. But after thinking about it more, it kind of falls into cybercrime. I can imagine hearing something like this on darknet diaries.