lets hear your power theft stories

[kooman]

lets hear some stories from your area, we have had several cases of meter tampering, stolen meters from other systems in our sockets, before the digital days lots of upside down meters, jumper wires, and probably my favorite comes from our neighbor utility, guys meter pulled for non pay, so he sticks butter knife blades in the socket, gets caught so they remove the hot line clamp from trans, so this guy leans a ladder against pole, takes a piece of pvc with a hook on end and lands the clamp. i have also heard of the 2x4 with a nail in it to refuse the cutout when pulled for non payment.

[Pootnaigle]

Ummmm we found one with a Tee in between the roof and the eaves of a business. It Had taps and for insulation the guy ran the wire thru a waterhose. That ran all of the airconditiong and heavy loads, and basically all that was metered was lights. They figured this had been going on for over 20 yrs.
Had another guy that installed a tiny electronic photo cell on the Potential latch of his meter. Everything used after dark was free. Found one other where the guy had painstakingly dissassembled the gears in the meter and reassembled them slowing the reading significantly.
Most utilities start monitoring usage as soon as an account is made active, and any significant drops result in further investigation.They caught an electrician with taps ahead of the meter ,On investigation they discovered he had done the same thing at his fathers house and his brothers. In Texas if they catch you cheating a meter they can esitmate how long you've been doing it, then estimate how much you beat em out of, and backbill you accordingly.

[rcdallas]

At a metering school I attended they showed us a digital meter with a switch. The little brass jumper on back was opened up, just put a switch there.

Had to play a game once with someone where I tripped the CSP off, couple days go by and the switch was back on. Probably a board with a nail in it. Taking the hot line clamp off ended that.

[wtdoor67]

I told the one about the guy using a ladder and a garden rake to put a hotclamp on.

Funny one was told by a guy I knew. I think the meter had been removed at this location. Guy decided he would jumper the jaws etc. Anyway there was a big scalded place on the meter base and the best part was the chicken wire fence just next to the meter that had the outline of a human figure with the arms thrown up. Could only imagine the hilarity if you had witnessed it.

[loodvig]

One trick found by our meter dept. was a small hole drilled through the glass/plastic from the bottom of the meter and a piece of wire could be put in so to stop the disk from turning. The bad guy knew what day the meter reader came by and he would just removed the wire. But like someone already posted and big change in usage puts up a flag now.
I found some 400W flood lights all hooked up to our secondarys at a baseball field with no metering at all! Our own style connectors were used too!

[Pootnaigle]

Yeah and probably one of yer cowerkers put em up there too.Prolly the lights were identical to those used by the power company Eh?

[rcdallas]

But to stay on topic, the business manager of local 66 Houston had some apartments in South Houston with all utilities paid and had the meters tapped. He lost his high paying jobs and had to make up all payments and came very close to being somebody's new girlfriend in prison. I forgot his last name, but his know handle was PEEWEE. That alone in Huntsville, made you a prom date.

LMAO!!

You sure do have a purdy mouth there mister business agent!

I've heard 66 has quite a bit of funds in the bank? :rolleyes:

[neil macgregor]

working in northern ireland about 11 years ago i was working on a tranny pole
and my work instrucsions said there was 2 cables on the pole but there was 3
so i did all 3 and told the boss about the extra one
next day he asked me about it and i told him what i did
so we head over to the pole and trace the cable some guy appears with a shot gun and starts going mental .now we're in northern ireland at the time
and im shitting a brick so i said **** this im out of here
ended up the guy got a £17000 fine he used to work for NIE and they sacked him for rigging meters

[Squizzy]

Quite a few years ago one of our South crews went to change a pole that had a cable on it that shouldn't have been. They had a look around and found the pillar on the other end over a back fence instead of on the front property boundry. So the inspectors come out and it turns out to be another utilities guys house who put the pillar in to feed his hydroponic cannabis set up, sufficed to say he was sacked lol...

[PSE Lineman]

My favorite one was the pvc coming up through the foundation to a recessed meter base. The pot growers cut away the sheet rock in the garage, sliced the pipe, pulled the hot legs apart, clamped on some temp clamps for anpther 200 amp panel nailed to the wall. Had 26 ballasts for 52 lights, 12 hours on and off. The thing that got them busted? They let the landscape go to hell, wouldn't keep the yard up! Off duty cop walking his dog smelled a "skunk", if ya know what I mean, the rest was history....

[Squizzy]

One of the crews a while ago found a meter that had a couple of "extra wires" in the front of it where the occupant was stealing power. The inspectors were called and they got a whiff of Pot growing in the garage and called the police. So the bloke got done. Problem was that several Utility guys who lived locally were fronted by Bikies who had funded $20k for this set up and they weren't happy and wanted to know who called the police and their addresses. Moral of the story as far as I am concerned is that if you find a grass grower tell them they have 24 hours to rectify the condition of the meter and then re-test it after that its the owners problem...

[thrasher]

Years ago we had a serviceman go out to pull a meter where the consumer had moved. As he is walking away with the meter in his hand he sees the porch light on. After a lot of hunting and finally getting the cops invovled found where the former homeowner had tunnelled out thru his basement wall and made hot compression connections to the ug service and then brought the cables back in to feed the second 150 amp panel in his house. So one panel with the second floor heat pump ran thru the meter and the other panel with the main floor heat pump ran thru the "free" panel. This guy was the first homeowner in the house so the computer programs never flagged him as a suspect account. Come to find out he was an electrician on a nuclear sub; which is how he could work in a confined space and make utility grade compression connections. The Navy was not happy with the man. I know they docked his pay for all past bills and I think he lost his security clearance to work on subs.

[Squizzy]

Knocking poles over isn't a real problem here only once that I know of. But I have worked with some UK Lineman and they say its a problem in some areas over there. A South African Lineman told me he went out to a feeder trip and he decided to go and check out a plume of black smoke in the area. when he pulled up he found three badly burnt African guys, they had dug up the main underground cable and lit a fire under it and stood next to it waiting for the insulation to burn off, well it did and blew up...

[rcdallas]

3415

3416

3417

[duckhunter]

Ours is usually jumpers, used to be upside down meters, but AMI eliminated that. Does everyone prosecute?

[Swollen Tongue]

One of my favorites was jumper bars made out of rolled up beer cans. Aluminium cans carried the load pretty well unlike spoons and wrenches.
Also found one where they put a jumper wire between the top and bottom clips on one side of the meter center and put a boot on that side. Left the other side like it should be. Put the meter back in and was only getting charged for one leg. This guy knew what he was doing.

[reppy007]

Ive seen most of what is stated here.....but one guy sticks out.....you see this guy must of hired an electrican to steal electricity,hell he didnt know anything about it.....he didnt have to.....he only owned one of the best known jewelery stores in Houston....maybe an hour in jail........nothing came out of it......why should it have..........he was only a multi-millionaire.:(