A woman in Lincoln, Nebraska, stands accused of exploiting a glitch at a gas station to fill her vehicle up, as well as others, with more than 7,400 gallons (28,012 liters) of free fuel between November 2022 and June 2023.
Lincoln Police have arrested Dawn Thompson, 45, and charged her with theft by unlawful taking worth more than $5,000. She is accused of stealing gas from a Pump and Pantry, by exploiting a vulnerability that sent the pump into a demo mode after a rewards card was swiped twice.
The software error has since been corrected, and the Pump and Pantry alerted police to the possible theft in October 2023, reports KOLN. Investigators managed to find Thompson by tracing the information associated with the rewards card that exploited this hack.
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Police say that Thompson’s card was used to get free fuel 510 times over the course of the six-month period in question, and video surveillance footage shows her filling her vehicle up at the station. Authorities add that the card received minimal rewards over the period in question because it was associated with such small purchases.
In all, the rewards card was used to pump 7,413.59 gallons of fuel, and the gas station’s manager estimates that gas cost an average of $3,758 per gallon in that time, bringing the total losses up to $27,860.27.
Police say Thompson wasn’t the only one using the card, though. Another person who used it claimed that Thompson had charged her to use the card on as many as 10 occasion, in order to get “discounted fuel.”
Thompson was arrested on March 6, in the wake of a months-long investigation. Her bond was set at 10 percent of $7,500. Theft over $5,000 is considered a Class IIA felony in Nebraska, and can carry a penalty of as many as 20 years in prison, per criminaldefenselawyer.com.
