Victoria Saha of KLAS Channel 8 in Las Vegas posted a story on her Twitter account of thieves stealing gas from parked cars. The most recent victim was a Las Vegas business owner. Gas thieves siphoned the gas out of the Ford work truck parked in front of her office.
Thieves Have Moved From Stealing Catalytic Converters To Gas
Catalytic converter theft was very common during the pandemic. The valuable metals inside catalytic converters were sought by thieves looking to sell them for a quick profit. Now, record high gas prices are causing thieves to steal gas from cars as well.
A Las Vegas woman named Stacy Houston says gas thieves opened the fuel door on her pickup truck and siphoned out the diesel fuel. This happened while the truck was in front of her office on Flamingo Road in Las Vegas. There were no surveillance cameras to capture the theft on video.
Houston also checked her other work vehicles, and they all had gas taken out of their tanks. One of the vehicles is a 14-foot box truck that had about $200 worth of gas in it when the theft occurred.
The victim is the owner of a company called BIO-Clean Team. It is a business that cleans up homicide scenes. Thus, they need to be available at any time, and they are unable to do that when there is no gas in their vehicles. She has decided to move her vehicles to her home where she can closely watch over them.
Thieves Do Costly Damage That Is Sometimes Much More Than The Price Of Gas
Victor Botnari of Universal Motorcars recently acquired a replacement gas tank for a customer who had a gas thief drill a hole into their gas tank. One of these replacement tanks can cost thousands of dollars. Botnari says gas thieves target bigger cars because of the straight fuel pipe. So the cost incurred by a victim can be substantially more than just the price of the gas stolen.
There are things a car owner can do to reduce the chances of being a victim of gas thieves. You can park your vehicle in a garage, and you can also buy a locking gas cap, which can at least deter thieves who siphon gas straight from the fuel door.