03-04-2025
Thieves siphon off $30K worth of gas from Lodi station
Apr. 3—One of Lodi's oldest businesses was the victim of a sophisticated theft last month.
On the weekend of March 21, a group of men in work trucks stole more than 6,500 gallons of fuel from Kludt Oil & Propane, located at 1126 E. Pine St.
The company said the fuel was worth more than $30,000.
Co-owner Aaron Kludt said staff checks its books every day to make sure fuel sales are consistent, and if there's a difference in the amount of gallons to sales, it's investigated.
"At first we thought... sometimes we're missing transactions, maybe with our card processor," he said. "Something was off the first couple times, then when we had a day with 1,000 gallons missing. We said something's not right. There's something going on. We don't know how we've got gallons disappearing."
However, it wasn't until the thieves stole some 4,500 gallons of fuel the following week that staff was able to put two and two together, he said.
Staff pored through surveillance video footage and observed at least five masked men in a flatbed truck, a Ford F-550 and a pickup truck pull up to the pumps on the days the fuel went missing.
Kludt said it appeared the men in the video were tampering with the pumps. The company he contracts with to supply the pumps conducted its own investigation, and determined the thieves were able to gain access to the lower section of the dispenser.
The trucks would drive away, and another pair of vehicles would pull up for a few minutes and remove some of the fuel before leaving. Then, the original vehicles would return to pick up equipment left by the second pair.
"They were disconnecting the pulser, which counts the gallons as it flows through the pump," Kludt said. "And they were either doing something or attaching theirs, that reads way less. They would swipe (their card in the reader) and it would show they got fuel, but maybe they got 17 gallons when it was really 600. So they were tricking the dispenser into thinking it was flowing a lot less fuel than it actually was."
The company has filed an insurance claim in an effort to recoup some of the loss, and new security features have been installed on the pumps so that if someone tries to remove an exterior panel, the system will lock up.
Kludt believes the weekend of March 21 was a trial run for the thieves. He said they might be somewhere else pulling off the same heist at another station.
He said a similar heist was pulled off in Stockton, and a station in Sacramento's Power Inn area was also victimized.
"I think as a whole, there's always been people coming up with ways to steal fuel," he said. "I know years ago there were guys with bigger vans, and they'd have a hole cut out of the floor with a tow inside of it. They'd pull over where trucks deposit underground, then they'd open it up, drop in a stinger and just suck the fuel up."
