A Nebraska woman allegedly found a lucrative quirk at a gas station pump — double-swipe the rewards card and get free gas!

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.

  • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
    English
    346·
    9 months ago

    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.