tagged: fraud, fuel cheating, gas station, gasoline, Greece, owners, petrol stations

Greece: Fraudsters cheat by filling fuel in vehicles’s tanks

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Economy, Society

Did you ever had the feeling you had been cheated while having your tank filled with gasoline in Greece? It is most likely your feeling was correct. A huge scandal has broken out about evil digital devices placed illegally on pump transmitters allowing fraudster station owners cheating motorists and pocketing huge amounts of euros – “black” and without paying taxes or VAT.

The trick is quite simple. For a petrol station owner it requires a relative small investment of 5,000 euros to buy the digital device. A small investment bringing huge profit.

Each fuel dispenser  has a volume counter. There is a meter that spins and counts the fuel volume and one transmitter that converts the information into an electronic signal and records the fuel amount.

The device – in fact, a chip – is placed to the transmitter and distorts the sent signal, i.e. changing the number of pulses upwards.

A 5 percent increase of the pulses while fuel filling your vehicle’s tank for 40 euros, gives your vehicle 5% of air and the station owner 2 euros.

Usually they care not to steal much, so that the customer won’t understand the fraud.

Should there be a raid by police or finance ministry stuff, the smart guy at the tank station deactivates the chip per remote control and everybody is happy. To find the device one has to open the pump, something that occurs very very rarely…

What’s the profit? A gas station sells 6 million litre gasoline yearly. With the average gasoline price at over € 1,60/litre, the station owner pockets almost half a million euros.

Ministry controls carried out after concrete accussations by the Petrol Stations Onwers Federation have found some 50 cheaters. Unfortuntately it hasn’t been announced who and where exactly… Then there is no permanent punishment but a temporary one and thus for a short period of time.