| Harvey Specter | 10-23-2013 09:16 PM |
Vancouver police warn of fraudsters reselling gasoline stored in modified vans
:badpokerface: :suspicious: Quote:
A series of sophisticated and coordinated gas thefts have Vancouver police searching for criminals who are fuelling the black market.
Twice this week police have caught drivers using fraudulent credit cards to fill holding tanks in unmarked, modified panel vans in a rash of gas thefts that is not expected to stop soon, according to VPD spokesman Const. Brian Montague.
“There’s no question that we’ve seen a level of expertise here both in the modifications of the vehicles being used as well as the fact that you’re seeing forged payment cards,” he said.
The first incident occurred Monday around 2 p.m., when a Petro-Canada employee at 57th Ave. and Knight St. called police to report that a man appeared to be using fraudulent credit cards to pump gas into a van.
Police arrived and arrested an 18-year-old man who was allegedly holding more than 200 payment cards that appeared to have been forged. When they looked inside the van he had been driving, they saw that it had been modified and held a plastic tank filled with more than 750 litres of gasoline.
In a separate incident, a 19-year-old man was arrested Tuesday after police were called to a Petro-Canada at 41st and Oak streets regarding “reports that a van was being filled with a disproportionate amount of gasoline,” said Montague.
Officers found dozens more fraudulent cards in that arrest as well as another van carrying a 1,000 litre holding tank that had been wrapped in a metal cage and strapped to the floor.
Police will recommend fraud-related charges in relation to both arrests, Montague said.
Earlier this month, a white panel van carrying a plastic tank full of gas caught fire after it crashed into a concrete wall at Oak St. near 53rd Ave. Two young men were seen fleeing the accident. Later, a pair of men walked into Eagle Ridge Hospital with serious burns to their upper body, arms, hands, head and face.
Montague noted the similarities between this week’s incidents and the van that caught fire, but said they could not be linked conclusively.
“It’s hard to say how organized these particular groups are,” he said, “but I think there’s some level of sophistication.”
He said the drivers were all very young and each had little or no prior contact with police.
“It’s sort of like drug dealers using young drug mules to pack the dope around who wouldn’t go noticed by police because they’re unknown to us,” he said.
“They’re young people who are probably earning a very small percentage of the profit and taking all the risk.”
Montague said it was hard to say how the fraudulent cards had been created. He said any card with a magnetic strip, including a credit or debit card, a gift card, or even a hotel key, could be modified and turned into a fraudulent card once credit card data had been obtained.
That information is “commonly shared, traded, bartered, or sold, sometimes through the Internet, through criminal organizations, or by word of mouth in the fraud community,” said Montague.
It is unclear where exactly the stolen gas was headed to, or who were the intended buyers.
“Probably the individuals already have buyers lined up … it could be anyone who wants to save a buck,” he said.
This type of effort to steal gas is something the VPD had seen before, Montague said, but he added that he could not remember such a cluster of similar incidents in as short a time.
The three incidents are unlikely to be the last of their kind.
“If there’s a market for it, we’ll continue to see it,” he said.
mattrobinson@vancouversun.com
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