1y ago

Double-swiping the rewards card led to free gas for months — and a felony theft charge

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.

183 comments

Receiving free gas is a function of the gas card. Responsibility lies with the company and team who designed the card, not with the woman who used the card as designed.
- I totally agree and share this sentiment among MMOs.
  If you design your game or product like shit and there are exploits, it's YOUR FAULT for designing it with exploits, not the customer's fault for actually using them.
  If they don't like it, then they can do better.
  Please put me on this jury. Fastest not-guilty verdict ever.
  
  What's your address and how good is your home security system?
  I mean if I can find a way to get into your house and rob you without immediately getting caught, I shouldn't be convicted even if the cops later find evidence later. Right?
- It's not a gas card though, it's a reward card.
  Those are designed to give back at most some small % of your purchase if you use enough money.
  If a security van crashed in front of you and spilled out gold, would you be allowed to take it because "it's their responsibility to not crash"?
  I'm all for fucking corporations, but your rhetoric seems flawed.
  
  Bad analogy, on multiple fronts. Better:
  A truck is on its way to deliver gold to you (you have been told this is happening). When it gets to you, the driver hands you a gold bar. You say, "Thanks! Can I have another?" The driver hands you a second bar. Then you are charged with theft of the second bar, presumably because it was illegal to ask for it.
  
  Seems to me like the reward was free gas.
  If you've developed your system that the rewards card can provide a bypass to free fuel, your system is the flawed one and it isn't on the customer to provide feedback. This isn't a user testing scenario, they should have solved this bug before it went to production.
  People aren't responsible for cheaply built solutions.
  
  Most gas cards are designed to give out small rewards, this particular gas card was designed to give out bigger rewards.
  If an ice cream scooper mistakenly gives one person a larger scoop than anyone else, I don't blame the person with more ice cream, that's obviously the responsibility of the ice cream scooper.
  Designing a rewards card that functions correctly and a car crashing because presumably something has gone wrong are very different situations.
  A deer didn't kick the fuel pump, wires weren't damaged in the register; everything worked as it was designed to, including the double swipe resulting in free gas.
  
  As always, it depends on what the courts say.
  That said, yeah it kind of is on them not to crash. If I was on that jury, I would vote 'not-guilty' to anyone who picked up money that was laying around on the ground, especially if it's public property.
  My mom once paid a painter hundreds of dollars in cash, and he lost most of it when pulling his hand out of his pocket and the money blew away. Anyone who finds that money should get to keep it.
  A bootlegger was acquitted in the US for killing his wife during Prohibition after he got out of jail and found out she sold all his stuff. He literally admitted to doing it and the jury said "not guilty" and cheered when the verdict was read.
  
  If you used a glitch to get a high score in a video game, should the developers be allowed to call the police on you?
  
  and that's why goose and gander thinkers will always be at the bottom of the ladder. it's ok when the good guys do it, it's not okay when the bad guys do it. choose chaotic good and we start winning. choose lawful good and you're a sucker.
Bullshit. Corpo's build a system that users figure out and use? Sounds like they got caught with their pants down and have to make an example. Fucking trolls.
If you do it once, good for you. If you do it repeatedly, also good for you. But if you "used 510 times, and more than 7,400 gallons of gas were pumped for free"( in only a 7 month period), I don't know what you expect. You're going 2-3 times a day getting 14gal every time.
- The article says she let another person use her card for a fee.
  
  That should be the illegal part. Taking advantage of a loophole should not be illegal. Charging other people so that you can take advantage of the loophole, on the other hand, is a scam.
  
  There it is. She got greedy. If she would have just minded her own business and not told anyone and kept it on the down low it would have probably never been figured out. Regardless, this is 100%. The business is responsibility and should not be blamed on anyone else.
  
  There it is
If she was rich, the response would be, "congratulations!", and if she was an LLC it would be a fine of... 5 percent?
- And if there had been an error that charged people more rather than made gas free, it would have required a multiple-year-long class action lawsuit to resolve whereupon affected individuals would have received a few cents in compensation and a few lawyers would have come away much richer.
- 0.5 percent.
  
  0.05 percent of net income.
- Yeah if it turned out my local gas station had been shorting 5% of every gallon for the past 3 years, I wouldn't be getting back anything close to what they stole from me.
  Sure this lady fucked up and took way too much free gas, but i have zero sympathy for the gas station.
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.
  
  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.
- 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?
  
  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.
- They do this fun thing in the US for that its called "fucking shoot you". I agree its all fucked up, but if you go an riot and respond with violence you just die dude. I don't want somebody else raising my children because I got shot by the sheriffs patrol
Sorry but how is this not on the system, let alone a crime?
This slope is slick, if she is guilty of theft due to a system error then whats to stop them from saying the price you bought something at was an "error" later?
And lets face it, swiping a card 2 times breaking your system tells me that you should get better QA not charge someone.
- I mean if the pump is set up not to force you to pay before pumping gas and you just pump gas and leave that's obviously theft.
  They'll prove that she knew what she was doing. They'll prove she knew that she was supposed to pay for the gas. They'll prove that she did the double swipe to get the gas. But probably more damning, if that $28,000 figure is right in 6 months she wasn't just getting herself free gas.
  It'll be interesting to hear more details like do they know that it was her every time and not other people. If she told other people how to double swipe and get the gas that's probably fine. Maybe she was giving other people her card and instructions on how to do it that'll be interesting to see how it plays out in court if she doesn't settle.
  
  Settle? this is a criminal case not a civil one. Maybe they will plead to something lesser, but ether way it is very bad precedent.
  The issue here, is that someone took advantage of a broken pos system and now they are being charged. If this stands you now have the base to potentially charge anyone who uses a broken piece of tech, and tech is getting crappier and crappier by the day.
  It does not matter if she took advantage or what the motive was. The underling issue is that now users can be on the hook for bad products. That is terrifying.
- This is why we have jury trials.
  
  I would love to hear about the pool selection in this case.
- "You didn't stop me stealing from you, how is that my problem."
  
  -Every banker in 2007.
  
  If I make a self serve machine and tell everyone to use it who's responsibility is it to ensure it's functionality? The customer?
  This would be I think more like if a staff member was not charging for gas to turn all the blame on the customers who benefited.
- Sorry but how is this not on the system, let alone a crime?
  This slope is slick, if she is guilty of theft due to a system error then whats to stop them from saying the price you bought something at was an “error” later?
  It comes down to intent. The reality is that she probably knew that what she was doing was wrong. I mean, come on, do you really think she thought she was supposed to get 7000 gallons of free gas? We aren't talking about her doing it once and not realizing it.
  We can debate whether she should be held accountable, but there's no slippery slope here and let's not pretend that she is some innocent victim getting swept up in the whims of some evil corporations trying to trick people so they can send them to jail. She stole gas and she knew it, and probably thought that she could get away with it.
  
  Where did anyone say this person was an innocent victim? No one is debating she took advantage here, the issue is no one seems to be putting any culpability on the company who made the pump. The issue here is a slippery slope as it expects a duty to report the error from her that should not be there legally. I could see some other charge like fraud be appropriate maybe, but theft is such a bad thing to charge her with.
  
  god, what a softy pathetic serf they've trained you to be.
$28,000 of gas in a few months? Yeah no shit. Find something like this and keep it to personal use if you must. Probably could've kept it under the radar or an amount small enough to settle without criminal charges if caught.
- Yeah no shit. Find something like this and keep it to personal use if you must
  Nah.
  Figure out how it works, don't use personal card, get a new one (getting a rewards card to someone who doesn't actually exist shouldn't be too hard), then exploit the fuck out of it.
  Remember to use balaclava at the pump, and don't use your own car.
  
  I'm going to go out on a limb and say wouldn't work anyway.
  Stations have cameras.
  Cars have plates.
  They'd track the car to the owner and the owner would point fingers at who borrowed the car.
  The camera would show the face of who was pumping the gas.
  
  If you don't use your own car, how are you profiting
  
  Lots of extra work outside of the extra rewards card, when you all have to do is: wear a medical mask, and walk up and use fuel containers.
  
  You’re forgetting the video footage. They can reconstruct everything from there.
  Keep it low and spread it around. Things never come out perfect and nobody notices small discrepancies because there is more important work to do than worry about it.
  
  What is this weird Lemmy world? Are you seriously saying that you'd wear a mask at the pump (already a huge LOOK AT ME I'M SUSPICIOUS problem), use someone else's car, drive to where your car is parked, then siphon the gas into your car....all to get a free tank of gas?
Please put me on that jury so I can vote not guilty.
"Stealing" from the ruling class is always okay because it's not stealing, it's reclamation.
- How are gas station owners ruling class
  
  there's a very good chance that if you own a gas station that you are part of a very small percentage of wealth in your community. it may not be equal to the 1% of the global population, but the result is the same - you profit from the distribution of a product that is almost completely necessary for the working class to function.
When I was a kid, I used a vending machine that had a busted coin return button; it counted the coins I put in, but also spat them back out, so I got some free snacks.
Come and get me, cops.
- There was a vending machine at my university that glitched out one day and spat out the whole stock of sunchips. Told my friends and they ran to the machine and came back with backpacks full of snacks. It was awesome.
Corporate needs you to find the difference between this woman and TurboTax.
lots of people could still be doing this if this lady hadn't been such an entrepeneur about it. If you ever discover something like this don't tell anyone about and don't abuse it too much; plausible deniability is far better a shield than a small pile of money - saying "oh I didnt realize" is far easier if you don't set up some kind of pyramid scheme around it.
To all the people defending her, how is this different than just pumping and driving away? You could always pump first and pay inside later, and it works on the honour system. In this case she clearly intentionally circumvented paying.
- It's different in that they gave her a card that says "here is a discount".
  If you go into a store, pay with a stack of coupons from that store and walk out with a free chicken, can the store come back and charge you with a felony because they made a mistake and claim they didn't really mean to print the coupon?
  How far can this go? Buy a car on sale and then get arrested for not paying the full price afterwards? "The customer should have known the deal was too good."
  
  Swiping the card twice puts the machine into maintenance mode where she manually adjusted the price to zero. That's pretty straightforward theft.
  
  If she went to a gas station one time and swiped her card and it gave her free gas, it's reasonable to think that she might have assumed the discount gave her free gas on the first use. This wouldn't be an issue.
  When she's using it to get over $20,000 in gas, selling gas to others by using her double swipe technique, that falls well outside the reasonable bounds of an honest mistake.
  So no, there is no slippery slope where you're going to be locked up for a store misapplying a coupon or whatever.
- Where the fuck can you get gas without paying first
  
  Some places allow filling up and then paying inside the petrol station.
  
  i've never paid for gas before pumping only after, this is southern ontario
  
  Used to be the norm in the US until about 15 years ago . Before cards took over and many people were paying cash, it allowed customers to fill their tank. It's still common in Europe.
- That may have worked in the past, but not recently, at least not around here. Pump won't function until the attendant activates it. (Per the signs, "cash customers pay before dispensing gas.")
- how do these fuckin bootlickers find their way to lemmy?
Gas Pumps are calibrated for the flow that comes from fully opening the valve by pressing handle all the way down.
Do with that information what you will.
- Ok I'm just a moron. I can't quite figure this one out.
  
  It's false.
- Whether you pump gas fast or slow does not impact the measurement/amount of fuel being delivered and/or the cost. If you pump 10 gallons fast or slow, you should get 10 gallons of gas and be charged for the amount. Fuel is metered at the pump without any aeration.
  https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2022/06/fact-check-squeezing-the-gas-pump-at-top-speed-will-not-put-more-air-in-your-tank.html
  
  I got a variance of roughly 0.5kg when pumping two containers of 15 liters each. I know their weight is less than 0.1kg apart when empty.
  One filled normal. The other one with the handle half squeezed.
  Not going to say every gas-station has the same technology. Just telling you my actual experience when trying.

183 comments